Reddit mentions: The best software certification guides

That really depends on what you mean by "absolutely no computer knowledge at all".

Do you mean you have no experience on the technical side of things, like programming, scripting, architecture, networking, web dev, etc? Or are you one of those people who sits down at a computer hesitant to do anything at all because you've never used one?

It also depends greatly on the resources you have available to you. I think you can definitely succeed in the field without a degree, but if you're able to go to university I would recommend it. Not only will it help you get your foot in the door but it will also give you a decent overview of a lot of the different technologies in play. The paper will always give you an advantage.

If school is not an option I'd simply start looking into different topics. Like I said, networking / cyber security are pretty straight forward as far as certs go. Cisco's website shows you just how deeply into the topic they cover. I think the CCENT/CCNA should be enough to get you an entry level job if you can demonstrate a decent understanding of the topic. From there the deeper you go the more you'll learn about network design and maintenance, which is a whole field of IT in and of itself.

As far as cyber security goes as I said the basic understanding of networking knowledge (Network+, CCENT/CCNA) is essential. From there, you can expand on your knowledge with Security+ and Certified Ethical Hacker. As someone who works entry level in the field I think having all of those will put you above and beyond most others. As far as I understand it most people will start as a security analyst which frankly can be incredibly boring depending on where you work. But once you have your foot in the door and you're able to learn more you can move to more exciting things.

To really round out your basics you can also pursue a COMPTIA A+ cert which teaches you about all the basic hard wares of a computer and how to maintain & repair them. At bare minimum you can use this to get a job doing help desk support and that can launch you to better places.

Honestly I would recommend diving into coding / scripting to. You might go your entire career without using it but just having a breadth of knowledge in all different aspects of IT / Computer Science will give you a huge up and helps you understand everything better to boot.

I think the most important thing to remember is that as far as Computer Science / IT is concerned the resources for just about everything you ever need to know are available online for free, or cheaply, or illegally (buy them when you can afford it). The key issue is you. You can research free materials on the internet. You can buy a extremely dense, all encompassing CCENT/CCNA book for $20 (CCENT is actually the first half of CCNA. You can take the CCNA all in one or split into twos). The real question is will you dedicate the time to it? You need to take charge of learning and spend at minimum a few hours a day learning new stuff. Not just to get an entry level job but to go beyond as well. The resources are there.

Tell me a bit more about your background, experience, and goals and I can give you less generic advice. But that's pretty broad and inclusive for anyone interested.

Edit: Speaking of taking "charge of learning", I've had this bookmarked forever and never used it. Supposedly a really good, focused list but I can't personally vouch for it as I've never used it.

People have recommended some good things, but as a student myself i will tell you this: Before moving into advanced things, PLEASE - learn the basics. Learn how operating systems work and how to use them in an administrative capacity (Yes, that means Windows AND Linux. I notice a lot of my peers are uninterested in Windows administration but from what I've gathered most organizations are windows shops). Learn basic to intermediate networking, this is a MUST. Programming is not a requirement to going into security but i'll tell you this; it'll really help you gain a better understanding of how computers work, as well as give you that extra set of skills to pull out of your pocket when trying to solve a problem. If anything I recommend learning something like Python, or C.

​

Also, a personal opinion of mine is: Only learning what college teaches you is not enough for security, regardless of if you want to go blue team or red team, or do malware analysis/reverse engineering. You should be self learning outside of school as well. Set up a home lab (/r/homelab) to familiarize yourself with different systems, and to get hands on experience with different technologies. It will teach you so much, and when you go for that first entry position your interviewers will be impressed with everything you know. Mine certainly were, and not to sound cocky but I'm still in school to graduate next year and I got an internship, got hired on part time during the school year because they were impressed with my performance during the internship, which is to be converted to a full time employee should I wish to continue working there when I graduate.

Put in the work and you'll be rewarded. So many people skip the basics because it's not as "fun" or interesting, but especially in security- you can't keep building on top of something that doesn't have a good foundation or you'll end up with a mess. If you know the basics you'll be able to work on basic things, and then the more advanced things as well once the ground is solid.

​

Also, don't listen to everything they teach you in school. Depending on your school a lot of the information security curriculum may be very outdated (10-15 years old). Learning older things is useful, but you really need to learn newer stuff as well because new things pop up every single day. You can try getting your CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+ to cover some of the basics. That will really help you - it's pretty much first year curriculum.

​

Edit: NoStarch books are some of my favorite security(and programming) books

and CompTIA Security+ Get Certified Get Ahead: SY0-501 Study Guide by Darril Gibson is one of the best books for the Security+ test. Professor Messer's free videos are absolutely amazing.

>Why is it so hard to figure out where to start?
>
>It's no secret that software development has exploded in the past 20 years. New software startups pop up like dandelions in the spring. It then follows that a lot of people think software development is a good career choice and are afraid of missing out on a lot of great opportunities.
>
>Software developers are, in general, pretty opinionated. I doubt this is unique to developers, but it gets tiresome when you've dealt with it for years. If we're not fighting over what operating system is better, then it's what language is better. If it's not that, then it's code editors, or databases, or frameworks, or bug trackers, or development processes, or...or...or. It's like we enjoy fighting.
>
>In a time where more and more people are becoming developers, it's not enough to be just "a developer" anymore. No, to feel superior now, developers need to somehow differentiate themselves from both the non-developer “rabble” and their fellow developers.
>
>This mentality has lead to more coding languages being developed that purport to "fix" issues with other languages. New frameworks are built to "fix" issues with previous frameworks. And on and on.
>
>All this leads to a huge amount of choices, opinions, and resources. Naturally, that makes starting to learn, daunting.
>
>Since I'm a developer too, I'm susceptible to the same opinions and biases that I just railed against. The difference is, I'm right. I'm kidding, seriously, calm down everybody. Here are my suggestions.
>
>Choose your weapon language
>
>As someone once said: “the weapon doesn’t make the man.” It’s probably a quote from some B martial arts movie or Dragonball Z, but the philosophy holds true for programming languages. A good developer is a good developer regardless of language. However, you need to start someplace, and if you pick your first language wisely, you’ll drastically shorten the time to hit your goal.
>
>Picking a language boils down to what you want to do. This is a quick list of general development goals and what language(s) are your best options to get there:
>
>1. Front-end web development (user interface and interaction): Javascript, HTML & CSS
>1. Back-end web development (services that front-end web apps and mobile apps call out to): Ruby, Python or Javascript
>1. Mobile development: Swift (iOS) or Java (Android)
>1. Windows development: C#
>1. MacOS development: Swift or Objective-C
>1. Operating systems, file systems, embedded systems, etc: C/C++
>
>Naturally, there are other options for each of these. Javascript is useful for items 1-5, for instance. But the list is a good starting place as-is.
>
>How to find good resources to start learning
>
>There are a ton of resources to learn to code out on the web. How do you sift through the chaff and find the real gems?
>
>Most resources fall into the following categories:
>
> Books
> Videos
> Blogs/tutorials
> Courses
>
>Books are the traditional go-to resource. Search Amazon.com for your topic and read reviews. Make sure that any books you're considering are new. Languages change and older books could slow your progress.
>
>A lot of people have gravitated to videos to learn coding and other topics. YouTube is the first place most people look. Fair warning, this is going to turn up a bunch of crap. Look at how many subscribers a given instructor has, and watch some videos to see if their style and method works for you. Another possible issue is that because video is more difficult to update for new versions of a language (or corresponding tools), some videos might be outdated.
>
>For blogs and tutorials, a simple google search like "best python tutorial" or "best swift tutorial for beginners" is a great place to start. As with videos, you'll have to try a few to see how they work with your learning style.
>
>Online courses are the newest resource on the scene. Codecademy is one that a lot of people find immediately. However, after I talked to a lot of people who tried it, none really thought it did a good job. Free Code Camp or The Odin Project are both highly regarded for web development. Udacity, Coursera, Udemy all have courses in different genres. Each has reviews so you can compare and only look at ones that helped others. My specific examples follow in the next section.
>
>Where you should start, specifically
>
>Each development goal in the above list is different enough to require different starting points. I’ll list the place that I’d recommend you start for each one. I have not personally tried all of them, but have come across them when doing research. There also might be better ones, and so if you know of any, let me know and I’ll update this list.
>
>1. Front-end web development: Free Code Camp
>1. Back-end web development: Ruby (for Rails), Python (for Django), Javascript (for Node)
>1. Mobile development: Swift Lynda’s Swift Essentials (check your local library to see if you get a free Lynda account with a library card) or Flatiron school’s free Swift course, Swift Programming book or Java Head First Java, University of Helsinki’s MOOC
>1. Windows development: Head First C#, Pluralsight’s C# course
>1. MacOS development: Cocoa programming for OS X, or the same courses for mobile Swift
>1. Operating systems, filesystems, embedded systems: C++ How to Program book, C++ Tutorial for Complete Beginners
>
>Once you pick your language and starting point and you start learning, some things will be obvious, but others will be difficult to understand. You’re going to run into trouble and with concepts and code errors. That’s normal. We’ve all been there. Getting unstuck takes practice too.
>
>How to get unstuck once you’ve started
>
>Once you start learning to code, you're going to run into problems that you don't know how to solve. This is normal and part of the process. You don't really learn unless you struggle through it. That said, you won't always be able to move forward without some help. So how do you find that help?
>
>First off, forget books. They aren't a great place to start here, because the number and types of errors they can cover is so small.
>
>Online is the easiest place to find help. Most devs look for solutions on StackOverflow or just google the error message (if they have one). Other solutions are to find newsgroups or forums dedicated to the language you're using.
>
>How to use Google to get unstuck
>
>When you first try to google an answer to your problem, you're going to run into the issue of what to search for. Experienced developers are really good at this part, but unfortunately, it's hard for beginners, who need it the most. So here I'll give you some expert hints on how to improve your search results.
>
>1. Always include the name of the language you're using. If you're using a specific tool, database, or framework, include that as well. Don't include all of them, just the ones that you believe are relevant. This will take practice.
>1. If you're getting an error message, include that in quotes. Edit the message to contain only the core of the message so it doesn't reference any files, classes, path or filenames that are specific to your program or computer. The trick here is to make the error message as specific as possible while still being general enough to apply to others who are using the same language/tool/etc. but in a different context.
>1. If you're working through a publicly-published problem from a book or course, add that information to the search.
>1. Explain what you're trying to do, with the fewest words. This is tough for developers of all levels. For a beginner, you may have trouble coming up with the right terminology. This is where the books, tutorials, and course materials come in handy. They should use the right language if you're doing something similar to what's covered in them. If not, you're going to need to try some different wording. Remember, other beginners are going to be having problems too and might explain the problem the same way.
>
>Here are a few examples I’ve used (minus the quotes):
>

If you are going to be a one-man IT solution, your work will break down four ways, each of which are a specialty unto themselves and will require different amounts of your effort at different times of the year. I'm going to go into a bit more than reading material, because frankly, you should have some warning about what the future might bring.

• Hardware
  
• Software
  
• Networking
  
• Inventory Management
  
  All four will require setup, upgrade, and troubleshooting in event of breakdown or customer complaint. The exception here is that your other coast's IT department probably has an inventory system already in place, you'll just want to get to know it well. Also, learn all about how your company handles shipping (which shipper they use, how they charge, who has authority to approve shipping, etc) and what security rules are in place for storing company equipment and data.
  
  In terms of Hardware, get and read just about any A+ book. It's going to be boring--I warn that in advance--but I've learned a ton of useful things from every A+ book I've looked at. The best one I've read is CompTIA's own A+ book because of how well put together it is, plus its written by the guy who writes the tests. There are a lot of things you may never use, but it makes a great reference, and your IT department might cover certification. Which becomes a great argument point for receiving a raise later.
  
  As for Software... that will change based on every software package you ever handle. Ask the distant IT team if they have a knowledgebase, and if so, what it will take to access it. If they don't, compile yourself a bookmarks list for the forums of every piece of software you will use regularly. If its Microsoft software, Google will work just fine. The problems tend to be so widespread that answers will jump up. They won't always work, but it'll help you troubleshoot. Also find out how the company handles its software licenses. That can be a real headache.
  
  Now the networking... That gets a bit more complicated. Depending on what your office is using for their network, it could be as easy as flipping power on and off on a few boxes hooked up to a broadband connection. If its more complicated, you'll want to learn about what solution is used for network administration. Good odds if its a major company that they'll be using Windows servers and Active Directory. Find out and learn about their account management solution. As for network hardware... you'll probably need to lean on the bigger IT team for awhile until you get comfortable with it. Proactively learn about routers, switches, domain controllers, DNS servers, and anything their Wikipedia pages link to that doesn't read like a Latin textbook. Most of your job won't be dealing with the theory, it will be trying to figure out where in the hose it is kinked, so that you can keep the Internet flowing and computers talking to each other. Learn about LAN cables and the different speeds, that'll help as well.
  
  For inventory, well, hopefully that's all in place. If not, secure a locked space if one isn't already in use. Talk to whoever is in charge of your facility and at least try to get a secure closet with a lock. You'll probably want to request a small supply of replacement parts or whole computers, dependent on what your overall IT department uses as their policy. Find out if they lease the hardware, and track everything you receive, ship, or disburse in a log. Keep that log backed up somewhere really safe. Track inventory info, serial numbers, company designations (if they're tagging hardware), dates of activity, and notes on things like shipping numbers. This will save your butt often.
  
  Good chance that for the first while, your job will be the same every entry level IT person ends up doing for awhile... You'll be someone else's hands. You'll have a problem, you'll try to fix it, you'll find out you can't or don't have privileges to do it, then you'll ask for help... then that person who would normally fly out to you will have you do the things on your end that they normally would, so they can finish things at their end. You'll be their hands in place. It can feel like monkey work, but eh, it can be a lot worse. You could be Migrating XP machines to Windows 7 for 3-10 months on 3rd shift, locked in a basement or storage unit. Folks all across North America have been enjoying that experience over the past 2-3 years.

You know, there really isn't a real good 'comprehensive' guide to all this kind of stuff. All I know is there is way more out there then anyone would realize.
A little about me, this is sort of my specialty. I've been doing application and system monitoring for over 10 years now and was an MVP for MS Operations Manager (MVP is a joke. Here's an MSDN sub, now work tech support for us). Anyway..
As for books, the only one I've found even remotely interesting about all this is The Practice of System and Network Administration. I actually bought it and am going through it now - seems like a good read so far. I'm tired of monitoring, rather go back to good ole system admin.
If I was in your shoes, here's what I'd do.

• Enable SNMP on all of the servers. And assign a community string for both read-only as well as read/write.
  
• Especially if you go to Server 2008, install and setup WinRM
  
• Install Powershell and learn it well. You'll never go back to any other scripting language in Windows again - especially with 2.0 & WinRM
  
• Download GetIf - yes it's old, but it still works. Go out and find the MIBs for the servers you use Dell/HP/etc.
  
• Yes, its a bitch getting the hang of it, but install Nagios anyway
  
• If you really don't want to install Nagios, then check out Servers Alive!. It's another tool I use and the 'enterprise' cost is only 300 euro. It has its flaws, but for what it does its pretty awesome.
  
• Also install Cacti for all your graph love.
  
• Learn all about SNMP. It's been around over 20 years now and imho does an awesome job if the devices you have support it. And even if they don't, with something like Net-SNMP, you can make your own OIDs that when polled run a script and such.
  
  Combining a free powerhouse monitoring tool like Nagios, with a graphing tool like Cacti, is all you'll need. It's even overkill for your network, but once they're all setup it's dead simple and you'll look like a rockstar - suits love graphs.
  Yes, you'll need a linux box, but a simple P4 workstation with a gig of ram is more than enough for it, and you probably have them lying around.
  And once you get into powershell (On IRC we hangout in #powershell on Freenode) you can do a lot of amazing things quickly with it - especially combined with WinRM.
  I could go on and on about all this, I've been doing it forever - and I can even help you with the setup of it all and answer any questions. Just send me a PM and I'll give you my email.
  As for SNMP, it's very well supported by all the major manufacturers - HP, Dell, etc. So in your RAID failure scenario, if you have a Dell server with a Dell RAID card, then you could have polled the machine to ask its RAID status and if there was a failure it could have sent a trap to your monitoring box to let you know. It can also handle all of the hardware info like drive capacity, processor utilization, etc etc. The only downfall SNMP really has these days is the fact that it can seem almost mystical to those looking from the outside. But once you get the hang of it, it's great. Nagios also has an add-on called NRPE (Nagios Remote Plugin Executor) that you can use to run scripts and such on local machines if you can't get the info you need out of SNMP.
  
  If you're interested in doing environment monitoring as well, a decent inexpensive device is the Weathergoose from IT Watchdogs. I've got one at home that I demoed years ago and it's still going strong. At $500 its a good price for what it does plus there's a ton of addons you can get for it or even make your own since its just I2C
  
  Anyway, this is probably a shotgun of information to your face, but like I said just ping me and we can talk about it. I'm recently unemployed, again, so I have the time.. again.

Coming from a seasoned (5year+) sysadmin with strong network knowledge, please don't expect a $105k salary within 2 years. Not being an ass, just being realistic (I am in Sydney, Australia on a roster of 40hours/week which usually does exceed 40hrs/w, but less than 50hrs/w. The salaries are slightly higher due to the cost of living here being stupid).

I work with CentOS on a day to day basis, and have been using OpenStack for well over a year now. I originally "learned the ropes" by doing the RedHat training and Certification for OpenStack on IceHouse.

Since then, I now use OpenStack with Kolla backed with Docker (containerised OpenStack). For those wondering what Kolla is, it uses Ansible playbooks with Jinja2 templates along with Docker.

Just a bit of background knowledge from my perspective.. Our implementation started with 6 utility style servers (ie. nova, neutron, glance, cinder, ceilometer nodes with redundancy), and 3 Ceph + nova-compute "beefy" nodes.

It's very specific to our company, thus requiring custom modifications based upon sable release of the current non-development release of OpenStack ("Kilo"). It's not recommend doing this as you are venturing away from standard, this was also highlighted by several speakers at the OpenStack Summit in Tokyo last year.

Being attracted to OpenSource has it's pro's and con's. You as a person, think it's great. But as a company, it's generally harder to get across the line due to the following (see this as an example):

• Learning curve on company dime (flip side is the long term savings due to it OpenSource).
  
• Product support in the time of crisis (potentially longer resolution times).
  
• "Fresh blood" requiring training (on the flip side, someone with knowledge generally comes at a greater cost).
  
  The list can go on. :)
  
  Anyway, I can safely say that you need strong Linux and Networking skills to understand a lot of the concepts that OpenStack has (As an example, have you heard of Network namespaces before? Heard of VXLAN? Heard of OpenvSwitch? Do you know what tcpdump or tshark is? Heard of LACP?).
  
  I very much agree with a lot of the other comments in regarding to focusing on your Linux skills before even attempting to tackle OpenStack.
  
  I would say an ideal method to build up your skills is to go through the support channels and work your way up.
  
  You gain very valuable knowledge from the perspective of "feeling the pain of the customer" in the scenario of an outage. It'll help you one day to put away the cowboy hat, and double check your work or write an additional if statement in a bash script. :)
  
  Passion should give you drive. You don't attempt to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro without knowing how to walk up a hill first. 5 years+ in the job, and I still study new things (heck, even old things to sharpen the skills - waiting on this to arrive: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071841962 ).
  
  Sorry for the wall of text, I just hope it helps. Feel free to contact me if you wanted some direction~

Ok,

Now that I'm a bit more rested I'll do my best to answer your questions in detail.

With the videos obviously there are a set amount of hours, but what it typically did was study/take notes on a specific objective and then watched the videos afterwards to supplement any info I might have lost. (Toward the end of the objectives I only watched videos and took notes on those because my textbook was a bit lacking but we'll get to that)

Some people take both Exams at the same time and thats cool if you think you can then go for it, save yourself an extra trip. I decided to Study/pass one exam and then the other. The first exam took me over a year because i only studied off and on and that was for the 701/702 so then those went out and i started over. As for my actual exams they were EXACTLY 3 months apart, but that was just a happy coincidence.

For my study materials i used a combination of things. My textbook was

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-220-801-220-802-Authorized-Guide/dp/0789748509/ref=sr_1_13?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413033916&sr=1-13&keywords=a%2B+study+guide

It's a good book and i loved the software that came with it as you can add additional practice exams to it from other guides. It is a very in depth text and a bit less casual than the mike meyers books. My only gripe about this book is that it doesn't cover the objectives in order so you'll wind up flipping through looking for data on a specific subject alot. (hence why i just switched to videos toward the end)

for practice exams i used this

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-220-801-220-802-Authorized-Edition/dp/0789749718/ref=pd_sim_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=05FH7YZJ8527K4AGNB9B

The practice exams in this book are amazing and the cheat sheet in the back is pretty helpful as well. Also all of the practice exams are also on a disc so you can take them on a computer or laptop if you wish.

Finally when you start drilling the practice exams head to

http://www.examcompass.com/ they offer 10 short and sweet practice exams that you can even take on your phone.

Studying is fairly simple. If you haven't already you should start with downloading and printing out the exam objectives found here.

801- http://certification.comptia.org/docs/default-source/exam-objectives/comptia_a_220-801_objectives.pdf

802- http://certification.comptia.org/docs/default-source/exam-objectives/comptia_a_220-802_objectives.pdf

then just start at the top and work your way down. When you reach the point that you think you could easily explain each point to someone else properly then you're probably safe to move ahead. TAKE YOUR TIME do a little each day trust me it's wayyyyyyyyy to much data to just shove in your head all at once. What i did was take notes on all the objectives using the videos afterward, then once I'd reviewed everything i started drilling practice exams. Once i started scoring at least 90% I would buy my vouchers and schedule my test about a week ahead of time.

The test itself can be a bit intimidating but just take your time and read everything in detail. There will be some performance based simulations (i'm not sure how much detail i can go into with those) suffice to say if your confident in your knowledge then you'll be able to complete them. Worst case just flag them for later and skip ahead to the multi choice questions, flag anything you're not sure of so you can double check it at the end of the exam.

Lastly people very rarely pay the full 188 for the voucher comptia usually offers a 10% off coupon on their website. if you google it i'm sure you'll find it.

In conclusion If you want to test in a week go over the exam objectives and cross off the subjects that you know like the back of your hand. and study up on the ones that you don't. Don't let the exam room intimidate you when you go to test. It's just another practice exam just with uglier lighting :P

I hope this has helped you at least a little. happy studying and good luck!

My suggestions would be to augment it with other tools. It is a great book, but you want to study from more than just one source.

A couple of tips on preparing are as follows:

1. You will want a good study guide. As already mentioend, the Wendell Odom book is great http://www.amazon.com/Routing-Switching-200-120-Official-Library/dp/1587143879 as is the Todd Lammle book http://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Routing-Switching-Study-Guide/dp/1118749618 In my opinion the Odom book is more detailed and in-depth but a little dry. The Lammle book is a little easier to read for newbies, but does not go into some subjects in depth enough.
   
   
2. For some that learn better by watching videos, there is a lot on youtube like the Chris Bryant stuff
   www.youtube.com/user/ccie12933 , TrainSignal and the like.
   
   
3. You will want to practice, practice, practice in your lab. This can be a virtual lab if you are tight on money like GNS3 http://www.gns3.net/download/ or you can build your own lab which is a better way to go with real equipment as tehre are a lot of things that simulators don't support fully. With real equipment there are a lot of things you will pickup that you can't with a simulator. Things such as cabling problems as you always pick the right cable in sims, physical items like getting used to certain models so you are not uncomfortable with this when you see them in the real world and then you can speak to the actual models you have experience on when you interview. http://www.certificationkits.com/cisco-lab-suggestions/ this link gives some really good suggestions and things to consider in building a lab.
   
   
4. You will also want some sort of practice exam simulator. In my opinion the exam reveiw questions in the back of the books are just not adequate or representative of what you will see on the exam and you will be shocked when you sit the exam if that is all you have seen. Check out Transcender (really pricey) or Measureup (cheaper, but just about as good) http://www.measureup.com/CCNA-Cisco-Certified-Network-Associate-C207.aspx to see some of their sample stuff.
   
   There are also some good places to find free study material. I will list a few here with what they provide...
   http://www.freeccnaworkbook.com/ Free CCNA Labs
   http://www.freeccnastudyguide.com/ Free CCNA Study Guide
   http://www.ccnaskills.com/ Wendell Odom's Blog
   http://www.ccnablog.com/ CCNA Blog
   http://www.certificationkits.com/blog/component/wordpress/?cat=60 Blog of sample CCNA questions
   http://ciscoiseasy.blogspot.com/ Cisco is Easy Blog
   
   I hope all those resources help you in your studies and definately feel free to ask questions here on things you get stuck on.
   

Congrats at getting into NEU. After reading a bit about the school, it sounds like you had to do work hard in your schooling to get into it.

On becoming a sysadmin, be patient. It's going to take a while. However, here are a few things to keep you busy:

exercise 1:

1. Tutor yourself in vim (vimtutor) or emacs (Ctrl-h followed by t). They are
   your world. DO NOT code in an IDE. Code in them all the way through
   your degree.
   
2. Make a custom vim or emacs rc that has syntax highlighting and
   personalizes your editor to you. Become a power user in whatever your
   editor of choice is.
   
3. Make a custom profile and rc file for your shell (choose either bash
   or zsh, but if you go with zsh, you have to learn bash anyway) to
   customize your shell to your liking
   
   exercise 2:
   
4. look up the man pages on the commands below and bash to learn what they do (when you type
   things into your shell that the oh-so-helpful! interwebz tell you to do, you should always understand
   what they do before your run them)
   
5. open three terminals
   
6. in one terminal run:
   strace -eread=all -ewrite=all -f nc -l -p 18100 127.0.0.1 > server_out 2>&1
   
7. in the other terminal run:
   strace -eread=all -ewrite=all -f nc -v -v -n -w 1 127.0.0.1 18100 < /etc/profile > client_out 2>&1
   
8. as root run: tcpdump -s0 -ni lo -w /home/conversation_out.pcap
   
9. use vim or emacs to scroll through the file and annotate everything you see in
   the file until you understand all of it and use wireshark to annotate everything
   that is happening on the network in that pcap you had tcpdump write out all
   the way up the OSI stack
   
   exercise 3:
   
10. look up the man pages on the command below and bash to learn what they do
    
11. open a terminal and run:
    strace -eread=all -ewrite=all -f wget -qO /dev/null www.google.com > wget_out 2>&1
    
12. as root run: tcpdump -s0 -ni lo -w /home/wget_out.pcap
    
13. use vim or emacs to scroll through the file and annotate everything you see
    in the file until you understand all of it. include everything that happened between
    your host and google (you don't know google's internals so just assume they're
    running an apache server) over the network in the annotation. study a webserver
    (apache, lighttpd, nginx) in debug mode with strace to understand what happened
    on the other side of the network connection and use wireshark to annotate everything
    that is happening on the network in that pcap you had tcpdump write out all the way
    up the OSI stack
    
    

• learn the config files and log file formats for major Open Source software (programs such as apache, a syslog daemon, postfix, BIND, ISC DHCP Server, xinetd, ntpd, etc.)
  
• learn how to monitor these programs and servers running them (nagios, graphite) and the networks they communicate over
  
• have basic understanding of cvs, rcs, git and svn. have advanced understanding of git or svn or both. store ALL the code you work on from here on out in your own software repo and keep it backed up.
  
• learn how to compile open source programs from the ground up and build your own packages (both rpm and deb formats)
  
• learn about puppet, fabric, capistrano, chef, mcollective
  
• learn about rabbitmq and stomp message brokers
  
• learn file permissions, user/group ownership, absolute and relative paths and how these translate to structures in the filesystem
  
• learn perl compatible regexes inside and out
  
• learn how to script in a bourne compatible shell, perl, python and ruby and get really good at scripting in shell and one of the other languages
  
• learn how to read C and be able to write simple programs in C. use gdb to single step some of these programs (both lines of C code and x86 instructions) and learn how they interact with the stack, heap, environment, kernel, c-library functions etc.
  
• play with sqlite, postgres and mysql to get a general idea of how databases work
  
• pick a web framework and set it up in a webserver, learn MVC and use a database back end as you develop some apps. you could track your homework or whatever with the apps you make but the point is learning. any of rails, django, pylons, sinatra are fine. starting with sinatra and sqlite is probably easiest.
  
• learn how to harden your operating system so that ONLY the services (daemons) that the OS needs are running
  
• learn how to write iptables rules to protect your host
  
• get one or two trusted friends to attack the host that you've hardened and see if they can compromise it
  
• learn the basics of all these protocols and their addressing schemes (where applicable) and any crypto they use: IPv4 (TCP, UDP, ICMP, ARP), IPv6, HTTP, NTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, TLS/SSL, SSH, NFS. Get familiar with the network packets that all of these protocols generate.
  
• learn the OSI stack and where protocols and various types of network gear live in the stack (hubs, switches, routers, firewalls, load balancers). all sysadmins should have CCNA level knowledge or better when it comes to networking.
  
• learn how to debug and troubleshoot. those friends that attacked your system for you? have them break something on your system. then you go in and figure out what's not working and fix it. do this again and again. if you can find some like minded folks then work together on all this stuff and learn from each other. good sysadmins work in teams to make things happen. we don't teach this in college or secondary ed. the work place ideally (hah!) is all about groups of people pulling off the impossible together.
  
• learn how to search in search engines with all the advanced operators that average folk don't use. search engines save you when you run into some weird error message you've never seen before that others have.
  
• hang out on serverfault and stackoverflow and learn from others
  
• learn the following commands/programs (and what type they all are. 'type' is your friend): ack-grep, apt-cache, apt-get, ar, as, autoconf, automake, awk, base64, bc, bison, bzip2, cal, cat, cd, chgrp, chmod, chown, cpio, curl, cut, date, dd, df, dig, dpkg, du, echo, env, eval, exec, exit, expr, false, fg, find, flex, ftp, fuser, g++, gcc, gdb, gnupg, grep, gzip, head, help, history, host, hping3, id, install, iostat, jobs, kill, killall, last, ld, ldd, less, lftp, ln, ls, lsof, make, man, md5sum, mkdir, mknod, mktemp, more, mv, nc, netstat, ngrep, nice, nm, nmap, nohup, nroff, nslookup, ntpdate, od, openssl, pax, pcregrep, ping, pkill, ps, pstree, pwd, readelf, rm, rmdir, rpm, rsync, scp, screen, sed, set, sipcalc, size, sleep, socat, sort, ssh, stat, strip, stty, su, sudo, tail, tar, tcpdump, telnet, tmux, top, touch, tr, type, uname, uniq, vmstat, wc, wget, who, whoami, xargs, yum, zcat
  
• learn how to use shell script snippets and perl/ruby/python oneliners to make yourself more efficient at the commandline
  
  Read these whitepapers:
  
  
• http://labs.google.com/papers/gfs-sosp2003.pdf
  
• http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable-osdi06.pdf
  
• http://labs.google.com/papers/mapreduce-osdi04.pdf
  
  Buy this book and learn it inside and out. It is your bible.
  
  If you do all this and learn it well, get a couple years experience under your belt (frequently there are computer labs that students can work in in college, that is one place to go) and then move to Silicon Valley or some other hub (sounds like you'll already be in Boston--there should be opportunity there). You'll never run out of work and you'll have the opportunity to try to work for the companies that make directly make money from their computing systems instead of being inside an IT shop that is a cost center in some company that does not appreciate you.

I say this all the time, but: Who would have thought that in the 2012, the greatest OS war of our day would still be BSD vs SystemV (iOS vs. Android)?

Generally, a focus in Windows is going to take you into corporate IT, building internally-oriented tools to support organizations. Here you'll want to learn bout VMWare, the full Microsoft stack, and look closely at tools designed for Enterprise support. There's less demand in this arena for nix, but also less chance to make a real impact on the world. Sure, there's something to be said for helping maintain the compute clusters inside of banks, or using Altiris or similar tools to manage hundreds of desktops for gigantic offices. I've done this myself, but I didn't have very much fun.

For my money, where you want to be is in web operations, building the systems that drive popular websites. Think about Instagram, Etsy, Netflix, companies that move enormous amounts of data around on the cheap, with relatively tiny staff. Read the blogs by the infrastructure team behind Etsy, and you'll realize quickly that these guys are geniuses.

Here you'll want to learn about how to interact programmatically with cloud compute providers, such as Amazon AWS, Rackspace Cloud, and the OpenStack providers that are starting to pop up, like HP. (A cloud provider is generally not just virtualization, but virtualization coupled with an API. It may sound small but it's a big difference!)

Here's some reading: If you want to learn a lot about nix operating systems, check out The Armadillo Book and The Practice of System and Network Administration.

If you're interested in learning web operations-oriented sysadmin, which is a VERY interesting place to be, also check out The Art of Scalability -- well, the first 2/3 anyway -- and the followup book, 50 Scalability Rules.

And especially, especially read and understand this, because there won't be many web-oriented companies still in business by 2014 that don't follow this process: Continuous Delivery.

Good luck! You picked a GREAT time to get started in the industry. The 00's were pretty boring by comparison. :)

EDIT: I KAN SPEEL

Odom 100-101

Lammle 100-101

There are 200-101 and/or 200-120 versions of both books, but I'm sure you can dig those up pretty easily on your own.

The material I mentioned (and hated) in my first post were from Cisco's Net Acad. The classroom pace is really slow for the most part. I can't speak too much for the Lammle book, but Odom had me up and running really quickly. Lammle's is probably easier to digest.

I think I get your issue, I had a similar one. Best thing you can do is take things into your own hands. Do your own labs / exercises and experiment. I'm sure you've heard of Wireshark. If you have the hardware in class (or use VMs) do some simple packet captures. An easy one would be capturing the traffic from a telnet session from your machine to a router / switch. You'll see everything (and I do mean everything) and it'll hopefully solidify your understanding of the basic (important) concepts. Don't know the current curriculum but if you're early into the course you'll recognize Source / Destination IP and MAC addresses action along with port #s. Could do a topology like VM --> Switch --> Router to poke around and see how switches forward traffic. It's easy to do and enlightening.

And if by wiring switches and routers is an issue (I'm assuming straight vs crossover) what helped me was thinking about the layers of devices. This isn't 100% accurate, but for the basic devices (routers, workstations, hubs(lol), switches) use a straight if the devices work on different layers and use a crossover for same-layer devices. Hub is actually Layer 1, but group it with the switch for cabling.

Layer 3: Workstations / Routers

Layer 2: Switches

Switch to switch = crossover (both work on the L2 level)

Switch to hub = crossover

Router to workstation = crossover (both work in the L3 level)

Workstation to switch = straight

Router to switch = straight

And for CCNA you'll mostly care about Layers 4 and down, layers 2 and 3 are most important. 4 = ports / TCP or UDP. 3 = IP. 2 = MAC. 1 = physical (fiber, ethernet, serial)

Apologies for the small novel. The more you work with it (self labs!) the better you'll grasp the concepts.

Good for you, you're seeking out your knowledge and it sounds like you're dedicated to learning as well.

You won't get a good sense of what we do alone, especially because it is a very diverse field and can include specializations in storage, virtualization, databases, helpdesk, desktop support, mobile device management, security (which in itself has a number of specializations), operations, project management, monitoring and reporting, copper and fiber networking, firewall management, programming or developing... See my point? You can read a little more on the fields here

Anyway, if your computer is capable I would suggest you at least familiarize yourself with SOME of what we do, try and get Hyper-V running and learn some of the Powershell commands for interacting with the VMs, then use those VMs to run some *nix stuff and learn how to use those.

There is honestly a ton of free stuff, books, documentation and such available for you, you just have to know where to look and what you might want to see. The search bar here sucks but use the google advanced search for this subreddit and there is a ton of stuff to find, here's a few examples you may find useful:

• Lots of small tips
  
  
• The Sysadmin Bible #1 & the updated one, #2
  
  
• Microsoft Dreamspark has a lot of free software for students, including SQL Server, Windows Server, etc
  
  
• Free Powershell courses,
  
  
• Free books #1, #2, #3
  
  
• Learning to code with CodeAcademy, Free courses from Microsoft Virtual Academy incl training labs,
  
  
• Certifications: CCNA routing and switching videos, Server 2012r2
  
  ... I've got literally dozens and dozens of relevant links that you might find useful. My suggestion is to start wide and shallow and figure out what you might interesting, then explore that further. If you want career advice I would suggest you focus on programming and *nix administration (there's a great comment on here in the last year with a path of things to accomplish) as these would give you the greatest variety of skills to create programs, apps, shell scripts, admin servers, etc... Also, don't neglect your soft skills or negotiation abilities as they are very valuable in helping you complete work when not working alone. Good negotiating skills will help ensure you don't get a $14/hr job when you're doing the work of a $70k

Umm, I think Python is a good language to start with. It's forgiving and low on boilerplate code. I haven't read it but Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw is supposed to be decent (and it's free online). I didn't like Learning Python published by O'Reilly. I'd just read reviews on Amazon if Learn Python the Hard Way isn't working for you. Whichever you end up with, I recommend typing all examples from the book into the computer by hand. Something about doing this really helps make things stick in your head. You'll also make the occasional typo and have to debug your program which is something we programmers spend more time doing than any of us care to admit.

I think it is important to try to think of something you want to make and have it in mind while you are learning the language. It can be any software but I recommend a video game. They are really good for this because you can just think up a simple concept or implement your own version of an existing game. Having a goal makes it so you are constantly solving the problems you will encounter while trying to reach that goal which is the most important part of programming (more so than learning the syntax of the language). This is actually the highest rated Python book on Amazon and is all about gamedev with Python.

After you've learned Python to the point where you are comfortable (no need to master it), learn other languages to grow as a programmer. Once you've gotten a couple languages under your belt it's actually really easy to learn even more languages (unless it's a very odd language like Haskell, Lisp, or Brainfuck). The problem solving skills you've acquired often work in any language and you learn some new techniques as you learn new languages.

• Accelerated C++ is the go-to these days for C++.
  
• The C Programming Language is often recommended for learning C but it's pricey and there are dozens of good books on C to choose from.
  
• Head First Java gets recommended a lot for learning Java.
  
• C# In Depth is very highly rated and happens to be written by the guy with the largest score on StackOverflow (a kind of Q&A for programmers).
  
• The D Programming Language I really enjoyed.
  
• Programming Ruby 1.9 is often recommended but it felt more like a reference manual to me. There are higher rated books on Amazon.
  
  

The best way to learn is to use it as your primary system, and you'll learn as you have to solve problems. If you're looking to learn its recommended you use something that isn't going to abstract everything like Ubuntu or Linux Mint does, and use something such as Debian etc. (or if you're adventurous and really want to accelerate your learning, Gentoo or others) where you're a bit more involved with less hand holding.

Since you're also wanting to peruse it for purposes of future career options, depending upon your location (NA or Europe) you'll see quite a bit of value from Red Hat certs if you're located in North America. For this there's a lot of reading you can do, but generally the recommendations come down to Jang or Sander books. The current RHEL OS is release 7, and the certification follows that so you'll have to make sure you're using up to date information for reasons of release specific changes (systemd as an example).

Additionally you'll want to make use of Administration guides and the official documentation. This will help you learn to use and administrate systems, but if you're looking to understand things on a lower level there are wonderful books such as How Linux Works to really understand what's going on underneath and help tie things together a bit.

At some point after you're familiar with Linux and you've been using it for a while comfortably you'll want to start learning BASH. Having a good handle on the command line with help with picking up BASH as you use the same commands strung together along with logic structures, error checking, and whatnot to accomplish the tasks you're trying to do. At least some BASH is recommended due to the power of it, and how all distros have a version of the bash shell so provided your script is built portable enough you'll be able to script tasks across systems.

This wiki links to a lot of valuable material, you'll want to go through it in conjunction with a guide such as this. As usual solving problems is a great way to learn, so if you give yourself a project to script and figure it out along the way is great.

Best of luck, this'll keep you busy for a while

The biggest hurdles I had motivating myself to work on a project was never coding itself. It was always setting up the compiler, IDE, environment, finding something to work on, etc. The biggest one for me is blank page syndrome.

You don't need to convert to linux if you don't want to but it is good to get some experience in it if you can. I spent sometime setting up a headless Ubuntu server to manage my torrents and be network storage. It took a lot of time starting from scratch but the experience has helped me out.

http://www.ubuntu.com
http://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions
http://ubuntuforums.org/

If you want to continue with Java (which is a good choice). I believe the most popular IDE is Eclipse. It has great plugin support and has been used everywhere I've been. You can use it for development on android phones as well if you want to play around with mobile development.

http://www.eclipse.org
http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/eclipse-adt.html

If your college is like mine, most of the later courses in computer science will not involve much coding at all but will involve a lot of math and knowing popular solutions to common problems (sorting, searching, graph theory, combinatorics). If you feel like you need to brush up on a language, there are a lot of web resources and books to help you.

http://www.codecademy.com
http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-Edition-Joshua-Bloch/dp/0321356683
http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1382580434&sr=1-2&keywords=head+on+java

Computer science and software development is a broad field which makes scaling it daunting at times. The only way to make it less daunting is to just dive in and do it. Pick a project and work on it. You will encounter problems you have no idea how to solve and that's great because now you've found something you can learn (usually through Google).

Solve problems in manageable bits. If you try to implement your whole program at once it will seem impossible. Implement small portions of your project at a time. Trying to create a Java chat client? Just work on getting some basic sockets to work and build a library you'll be able to use going forward. This will make the goals seem manageable and help you modularize your code. It helped me with not feeling overwhelmed about my project's scope.

I hope I didn't sound condescending. I just wanted to share some things that have helped me. I don't think you are in a bad spot, you just need to stay motivated and find some things to work on to help you learn. If you have any specific questions I can try to help out, but there are other people on this sub that are far more knowledgeable than me.

Students of networking are often really excited and anxious so they don't notice this as they stumble upon this subreddit, but this question gets asked almost every other day. I will just copypasta and edit a little of what I posted earlier today.

First, don't take the composite. Do you like money? You will probably fail at least once. I failed my first time. Goodbye money. Goooodbye pride. Helloooo shame. Take the ICDN1 and then ICDN2.

Here is the current blueprint for ICDN1 It is meant to be followed from top to bottom as the first topics are fundamentals, working its way down to switching and then routing.


I recommend getting a SafariBooks subscription. It even has a free trial. The Livelessons videos are over $100 retail and the Odom and Lamlee books are another $100. For $39 a month I think SafariBooks is the best value.

Then on SafariBooks, search for CCNA Livelessons videos [specifically "CCENT ICND1 100-105"] on ICDN1. Kevin Wallace goes through the blueprint from top to bottom and I just think he is a very focused and excellent instructor. He has another video series there called "Learning Path: CCNA Routing and Switching" which goes off the blueprint slightly into a deeper understanding of networking fundamentals. Disclosure, I have not watched the new exam videos since the exam was revamped last year, but I did watch his videos from the last exam version.

Supplement your learning by reading the Odom and Lammle books on ICDN1 which are also available on Safaribooks. You can even download the books for offline reading on your phone or tablet. Some like Odom's official cert guide more but it is dry material that follows the blueprint. Lammle is a little more 'colorful' but I don't like his prose and how he gets off topic with real-world scenarios. There are also some cram guides that have quizzes and good commands to know. Again, all of these are available on SafariBooks. ^I ^am ^not ^a ^shill ^for ^SafariBooks ^but ^I ^use ^it ^almost ^everyday.

For additional studying you can get some pre-made Anki or Quizlet decks. They both have mobile apps [Anki is not free. Quizlet is] and are super helpful when you don't have the ability to open a large book or watch videos...or don't have the attention span to re-read a chapter.


When you want to touch 'real' equipment you can download Packet Tracer for free from Cisco Net Academy. Dan's Courses has step-by-step Packet Tracer labs and solutions. Labbing is essential but you definitely don't need a physical lab for CCNA and especially ICDN1. You eventually can graduate to GNS3 but you should only need PT for ICDN1 and probably ICDN2.


Lots of people like CBT Nuggets but I find that since they don't follow the blueprint very well and the presenter Jeremy Cioara gets off topic [I.E. excited] and can throw off focus of the subject matter. Also at something like $100 a month [legally], it is expensive for what you get in return, which is one video series with some large holes in the knowledge you need to pass.

Instead of buying tons of books, you might want to look at Safari Books. I have the 10-book bookshelf subscription, and it is seriously plenty. Pros, you have instant access to a massive library of tech books. Cons, you are stuck reading on your computer/tablet/phone (I did try reading a few chapters on my Kindle, but the didn't care for the experience).

Books I would suggest:

• UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook - this is seriously a great book, that will make any admin better.
  
• Time Management for Systems Administrators - has a lot of good tips for time management, but some things are a little dated.
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition - This is a great read on how to be a better system administrator.
  
  I'm not a huge fan of training videos, but generally watch recordings from conferences. Although, I do really enjoy the format of vimcasts though.
  
  As for general advise, I did see someone recommend looking for an MSP. If you are looking to be a Linux SysAdmin, I wouldn't recommend this route as you are going to be supporting MS installations. Personally, I started doing help desk for a web company and moved up from there. Also, I worked hard to create my opportunities within each position. You'll have to put yourself out there and be patient, It took me 4 years to earn the official title of Systems Administrator (in a small-ish town). The key to this is finding a good Sr. SysAdmins who are willing to mentor you, and some environments/people aren't conducive to this.
  
  EDIT:
  
  BTW, I have a B.A. in Political Science, so don't be ashamed to rock that Philosophy degree. You will see a lot of posting that are looking for a B.S. in Computer Science/Computer Engineering/Rocket Surgery, but seriously don't even worry about that. Most job postings are a list of nice to haves, and most places really only care that you have a degree.
  
  I've been recruited by and interviewed with some very respectable tech companies. I just usually have to explain how I got into tech with a political science degree. In an interview, having the right attitude and knowing your stuff should say more than your major in college. But, you will also run into elitist douche bags who knock your degree/doubt your abilities because you don't have a B.S. in CS/CE. If you work with these people, your work should speak for itself. Don't try and get caught up into a pissing match with them. If it is an interview (as in someone you might work for), practice interviewing never hurts.

Whoa Whoa slow down there Dingleberry.

First off. Good that you are interested in IT. But IT is huge and there are so many aspects to it. I suggest starting off with something like the CompTIA A+. That will give you the base knowledge you need to know to be able to troubleshoot many everyday end user problems. By base knowledge I mean the thought process and methodology. IT isn't predictable. There are 100s if not millions of cases where following X directions is supposed to give you Y results but it doesn't because something that seems completely unrelated is causing the issue. The A+ helps put you in the correct mindset.

The CompTIA A+ you can just pick up the book for it, sit and read it. It isn't a class and is very entry level. There are classes for it but I personally advise against it. I read the book and took the test my first year in college. But I was already fixing problems on my own. It just supplemented what I knew and taught me more.

What ever anyone says about the A+ being easy is semi true. I can promise you that anyone who thinks they know their stuff does not know everything. That also includes A+ material which again is basic. Everyone who reads those books will learn something. But for seasoned people it can be boring since a lot of it is rehashed info they know from experience. The A+ is conceptual and the methods taught are not written in stone. Also the test is performing troubleshooting the ComTIA way.

For example a common troubleshooting tip for network connectivity issue such as not being able to get online is something as simple as checking to make sure the ethernet cable is plugged in. And CompTIA says that should always be the first thing you check. This is something basic that many people overlook because in my experience very rarely the issue is the cable not being plugged in.

Don't skip it. It will be your building blocks. You don't have to take the test. But it will help you get your foot in the door into a help desk position.

The Cisco Net Acad is good for getting fundamentals of networking in the Cisco world and is training toward the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). Meaning the scope is very limited. You will learn how a network works in general. Meaning the how information gets from point A to point B and theory behind why it works. But then it will take a sharp turn on to Cisco network equipment. I suggest reading a Sybex's Net+ book by Todd Lammle. The Net+ is also by CompTIA but focuses on a MUCH MUCH broader spectrum of networking and troubleshooting networks. For example, the Cisco course isn't really going to dive into this like token rings, MAUs, ALOHA, DSL, DSLAMs, Cable, and other tech. The Cisco learning path is more, here is what a network is, here is why it works, here are some general things that apply to all networks, and now let configure a Cisco switch and a Cisco router, and finally let's troubleshoot common Cisco problems that people run into.

Use the Cisco classes to build on your Net+ knowledge. I'm not saying to take the CompTIA A+ and Net+ exams, but at least study the material. Because it sounds like you aren't really sure what you want to split off to. If you go straight for the Cisco class, you will learn nothing about computers because Cisco doesn't care about what desktop/laptop/server you use for this level of information.

Being well rounded in IT is more valuable than being a specialist who only knows one thing in terms of job opportunities. But from what I've seen specialists make more money if you can find a job for that specialization.

Now to answer your 3 questions.

1. Read a Net+ book. It will teach you all the basics you need to know. There will be some overlap in the beginning but that is about it. It's better for you to have a wider range of networking knowledge than to be locked into a specific vendor from the start. You have years ahead of you to worry about vendor specialization. But Cisco currently is the defacto networking equipment. Juniper is catching up and HP and Dell offer enterprise solutions that compete with Cisco.
   
   
2. In my college it was a 4 semester class held once a week. I would talk to your community college about completion time. If you want to finish it faster, you might be best served by going to a trainer. But they are a lot more expensive and the material they will throw at you will be bigger chunks because they will expect you have some base knowledge. This is a great reason why you should read the Net+ books. It will get you familiar with general networking concepts so that when you take the class you're not sitting there with confused look on your face.
   
   
3. There really isn't a guide. The Cisco Net Acad classes follow the exam Objectives for the CCNA. For you the major Certs would be the A+, Net+ and CCNA (ICND1 and ICND2). The CCNA is a cisco certification that can be taken 2 ways. The composite CCNA exam. And the ICND1 and 2. Passing ICND1 will give you the CCENT. It's basically part one of the test and saying that you can walk into a small business and get a basic network up and running. The ICND2 is the second part and will give you the full CCNA. The composite test is both the ICND1 and 2 put together.
   
   The composite test is meant for those with experience and is generally harder because you need to know less about a lot of topics where as the ICND1 and 2 you need to know a lot about less topics. You should take the 2 test route.
   
   These are the books I read. These are also the ones I mentioned above.
   
   Sybex ComTIA A+ http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Complete-Study-Guide-Application/dp/047048649X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372738911&sr=1-3&keywords=sybex+a%2B
   
   Sybex CompTIA Net+ by Todd Lammle http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-Study-Authorized-Courseware/dp/1118137558/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372738836&sr=1-8&keywords=todd+lammle
   
   Start off reading these two. These will teach you everything you need to know to understand what you are getting your self into. From there you can go into specialization such as Cisco. For that I used the Wendell Odom books which are the official Cisco books. Warning, the writing is dry.
   
   Cisco ICND 1 100-101 by Wendell Odom. http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-CCENT-ICND1-100-101-Official/dp/1587143852/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372739094&sr=1-2&keywords=wendell+odom+icnd1
   
   Cisco ICND 2 640-802 http://www.amazon.com/ICND2-Official-Certification-640-816-640-802/dp/158720181X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372739138&sr=1-4&keywords=wendell+odom+icnd2
   
   NOTE: I did not see the ICND 2 book by Wendell and Odom for the new exam objectives that will take effect later this year. So the first ICND 1 book will be valid for the new test. The second book will not be but it would not hurt you to read it until Wendell and Odom come out with an updated ICND 2 book.
   
   I've also heard good things about the Todd Lammle CCNA book but I do not see one for the newer exam objectives.

Depending on your level of knowledge:

Networking

Brocade IP Primer I haven't read it myself, but some guys around these parts that I have a lot of respect for recommend it highly for beginners.

CCENT Offical Cert Guide Good next step after above and gets you the CCENT cert which is half the ccna if you pass the test.

CCNA Official Cert Guide Next step after CCENT, gets you CCNA obviously if you pass the test.

If you need to know some basic wireless, I highly recommend the CWTS by CWNP. It is meant more as marketing/sales, but honestly its a really good entry into wifi. You can always follow it up with the CWNA after.

And an always favorite, the network warrior. This book really brings it all together for doing day-to-day networking for a ccna level. I haven't read all of it, but the majority I did read really clarified what I the CCNA brushed over.

As far as Microsoft and other tech's, I highly recommend getting your hands on CBT Nuggets (Yeah, its a bit expensive ~$1000 / year) and just start devouring as much as you can. Watch two or three shows a night? Sub one of them for a CBT nuggets vid. Just devour a few books and some vids and do your best to lab (either in vmware or with gear) and you'll be off to a really great start.

On a political level at work, I'd be fighting for some training (again cbtnuggets or the like) saying, hey tech is always moving forward and you need it to keep up and benefit the company. If you stay hungry you'll do just fine :)

I was trying to keep my comment brief so I realized it was going to sound much easier than it actually was. You are very correct, it took a ton of work and I was very motivated. I would love to elaborate a little more.

First when I committed to really take it serious I already knew how to program, but my skills where REALLY rough. My code was horrific, but it didn't matter because it was my own little hobby. So the first thing I knew I had to do was actually study the basics and good practices. I bought this Java book, http://amzn.com/0596009208, and I absolutely loved it. I just consumed it cover to cover.

My days were very busy. At my current job I typically worked 50-60 hours a week, so all my studying happened in the evening and late at time. It's hard to say how much time I put into studying, but it was all I did outside of work. I never really thought I was wasting my time. I had a unnatural belief that I would be able to turn these new skills into something useful.

After I finished that book I moved on to making my first Android app. It was a rewrite of one of the Python programs I created. I didn't buy and special books for this. The problem with the mobile field is that the technology was progressing so fast that books became outdated quickly. I did all my Android learning from Google searches and StackOverflow. I was in love with developing. At this point It was very common for me to work until 2-3am and I would be getting back up at 5am to get on the road for my current job. It's actually really crazy how you body can get use to this after you do it for an extended period of time. Of course I realize this wasn't healthy at all, but in my mind I would only be doing it until I could make it my profession. I never doubted myself that I wouldn't make this a reality.

After my first Android app I created another one that is the app that was for a niche market that I still work on to this day. Within three months this app had over 30k users and I was getting a ton of requests for an iOS version. I knew I didn't have time to teach myself iOS dev and continue to improve my Java/Android skills, so I kept pushing it off.

So now I really felt I had markable skills. I figure if I could do something that made someone else money, I'm hirable. But the problem was how do I convince someone that I could do this. I never went to College so you have to prove your worth in other ways. Luck have it there was a software development company in the small town I lived in, and I decided I wanted to work there, but how!. That is when I came up with the idea that I would pay them to make the iOS version of my successful Android app. My plan was simple, I would impress them with my Android app and what I didn't all on my own and during the development process I would be there as much as they would allow letting me work along side of them. I figured by the time they were finished they would want to hire me. Guess what...

They hired me! I successfully did it. I was so elated. I was making really good money doing what I currently did, so I took a 50% pay cut. This wasn't easy since I have multiple kids under the age of 5 at the time and my wife was stay at home. My wife was absolutely amazing during this change and I owe so much to her supporting me.

In all it took me about two years to get to this point. It took me about another 2 years to get to making what I was before the career switch. The rest of the story isn't probably as interesting as getting to this point. Basically I started teaching myself iOS development right away among other other types of development.

  Hello /u/rennypenn,

 

I was in the exact same situation as you until just a few months ago. I was in customer service for over 10 years but technology was always my passion and I deeply wanted a career in the industry. Unfortunately, I did not complete a college degree and thought a career in IT would never be possible for myself. Then I was introduced to the world of certifications which made my dream into a reality and was able to land a help desk tech position.

 

Some people will tell you certifications are not very helpful and will not benefit you much. I've come to realize that people who say this usually do not have any certifications themselves so they've never personally benefited from them and assume certifications to be useless. Do not listen to them, certifications will help show potential employers that you have the fundamental knowledge to do entry-level IT work.

 

The following resources will make you more than ready for these exams.

 
• Professor Messer video course and study groups

 
• Professor Messer course notes and practice test

 
• Mike Meyers All-in-One book

 
• Mike Meyers 901 and 902 course on udemy

 
• CompTIA 901 and 902 objectives.

 
• Exam Compass

 
• Crucial Exams

 

After completing the exams and receiving your certification you should immediately begin a resume and work daily to perfect it. If you are not too comfortable with writing a resume you can visit IT staffing companies like TEKSystems who will give you free resume and interview coaching along with helping you get employment.

 

When you get a resume you are happy with, begin sending it to every IT job opening in your area listed on Indeed, Career Builder, Monster, and listings to jobs under the local Gigs>Computers section of Craigslist.

 

Apply for any IT position you see and keep in mind that 99% of job postings, even entry-level, will "require" a Bachelors degree, A+, Network+, Security+, ITIL, CCNA, and 5+ years of experience, and much more. Apply to these positions anyway. This is just wishful thinking of the recruiting team. If you apply to enough positions someone will eventually call you for an interview. Even if you really are under qualified for the position you applied to they may have an additional entry level opening that is just not posted yet and still call you. I applied to well over 150 jobs over a 5 week period and finally landed an interview and got the job as a help desk tech, but the job I initially applied was several levels above help desk.

 

If I can do it, anyone can. Just don't get discouraged and don't give up. Eventually someone will give you a chance and you will get your foot in the door. Good luck to you.

I would recommend either Exam Cram 6th ed. by David L. Prowse or Mike Meyer's A+ passport. There are bigger books (1200+ pages), but I don't think they're necessary if you've already assembled machines and installed various operating systems. You can probably do fine with one of these concise guides. If you really want to browse the various books and determine which you like the best, then you can do that by signing up for a 10-day free trial with SafariBooks. This will give you full access to 10 different books for 10 days...enough time to determine your favorite. Just remember to cancel before the trial ends or they might bill you.

Professor Messer is a good source of videos. CBT Nuggets is also good, but kind of pricey. You might try their 7-day trial and see if you like it. CBT Nuggets is about 35hours of video and Prof. Messer is 20.

I started with a pretty extensive background in hardware/software troubleshooting but studying really helped everything come together. I learned the most from the Printers chapter/videos. I had never taken a Comptia exam before and was a little unsure of how detailed the questions would be, so this made me study a little harder. I studied for each exam separately. About 2 weeks preparing for the 801 and 10 days or so for the 802. The 802 was a little more challenging.

Good luck!

There aren't many uses for HTML other than web development and as for the last question read below.

_
Well what do you want to do?
Web development? W3Schools

Note: There are issues with W3Schools as seen on W3Fools but It's a good resource nonetheless.

If so back end or front end? (Simply front end is client side scripting and CSS/design and back end is server sided scripting, if you need more information about these take a look at some of the links and search Google)

If back end try something like PHP, it's a nice language and is quite straight forward. PHP | W3Schools

Simple installers --> WAMP Server | XAMPP

IDE --> PHP Development Tools

If front end then really you need to learn JavaScript. W3Schools | Mozilla resources
(JS can also be used for the back end Node.js)

But for both you need to know HTML. W3Schools

Do you want to make computer programs?
Then maybe stick to something like Java. Oracle

IDEs --> Eclipse | Netbeans

Or do you want to do both?

Then Python would be a great start. Python.org

Video tutorials The New Boston

Courses Udacity | Codecadmy

Java paid resource: Java headfirst

There are also recommended resources to the right also maybe head to your local library --->
_
I hope that helps you decide on what you want to do, I would provide more links but I think that should suffice.

And it should be noted that languages are all very similar so no matter what you should be able to apply what you learn easily so just start where you want to and if you want to expand from say web development to programming it should be an easy transition.

EDIT: Added a small amount of information.

Head first Java is what got me out of the woods in less than a week. It's broad and doesn't go into many details but it makes things stick in your head. Effective Java will fill in the blanks. (older editions of the book are available on the internet).

As in for problem solving - don't try to solve the entire problem at once. Break it into simple tasks. Don't start with the main challenge, start from small and simple things. Imagine someone already solved the hard part - make a method to accept the input and format the output. Leave the solveMe() blank for a while. Once the prep work is done, think how you're gonna arrange your input to be processed by the solving part - will it be a map, a list, a custom structure? If so, create that custom class, complete with getters and setters and other convenience methods you think might be useful.

When approaching a solution, first of all, think if it reminds you of some algorithm you had learned before, some homework problem, or another challenge. If not, try to present the challenge in more general terms, like if they talk about sorting apples by color and weight think sorting numbers, etc. Then google it, but don't try to copy and understand the complete solution on SO, instead look for references to an existing algorithm - there always is, these challenges are just slightly decorated common algorithmic problems. Then go to wiki and read about it.

Also, /r/dailyprogrammer marks challenges "Easy" not because they can be solved by a complete beginner with no experience, but because the solution requires little advanced analysis and optimization - like bruteforcing. They're not always simple. If you want something light and truly simple, like a mental workout, try http://www.codingbat.com - they have a Java section ranging from very simple to slightly challenging :] Don't get discouraged and again I really recommend the Head First series, as well as reading through Data Structures and Algorithms course (I did Berkeley's CS61B which by the way was how I found out about the Head First book :])

> Did you write down the commands for every topic Red Hat states in their website for RHCSA?
>

I did not - however, I've been a "Linux/UNIX admin for 15 years" so the commands are either quite familiar or easy enough to look up specifics from the test system during the exam. Now, the RHCE - I studied my @$$ off for. I know some people in this subreddit essentially don't care about the NDA, or skirt the line - I try not to do either, if I can help it. So, I can't answer your questions thoroughly, but I can still provide some advice.

> Also, are all those topics exactly what is going to be on the exam or that is a tough/general outline? Thank you very much...

The outline is pretty accurate as to what you can expect on the exam.

There are a few very important "tips" regarding the exams:

• know how to help yourself in a semi-disconnected environment. Know where to find the example configs, how to install the different documentation packages on how to use them (man, info, etc...)
  
• be sure you reboot and watch the console during the boot sequence (if you're really diligent reconfirm that the previous solutions are still applied - i.e. if you know that you updated the firewall previously, make sure those changes survived a reboot)
  
  Other tips:
  
  
• Get Michael Jang's guide - I thought someone had mentioned it had been released. Amazon is still showing a preorder. I have not used his guide for RHEL 7 - but his RHEL 6 guide got me through the RHCE (with a 100% actually).
  
• take a Red Hat class.. and yes, I know they are expensive. I thought you could access the RHEL 6 classes online now for free though (I'll try and find a link and update this thread).
  
  Some times you have to get creative. Like pulling down an RPM to look at the pre/post scripts and rpmbuild files to get some guidance on how to do something.

Based on reading some of your comments it looks like what you are really asking about is "how do I learn security engineering?"

The answer is by reading resources that explicitly teach the concept, because it is a specific discipline that blends software engineering, systems engineering, and computer security theory. It is probably most properly classified as a sub-discipline of systems engineering, so reading about systems engineering in general can be useful as well.

The following do not teach you "how to hack" they teach "how to look at this system/application from a security point of view" which seems to be what you are looking for.

Resources:

• NIST SP 800-160 (read through Appendix F which covers tons of secure design principles -- dense but comprehensive)
  
• Security Engineering by Ross Anderson is a phenomenal book and essentially the Bible of security engineering
  
• The Art of Software Security Assessment is a great book I literally just found a few minutes ago that covers a tremendous amount of information on how to go about conducting application security audits (process to follow, technical key points to look for, threat model analysis, etc)
  
• MIT Computer Security lectures basically an entire semester worth of lectures on how to think about security as an engineer
  
  Both of those books can be bought through Amazon or there are PDFs online. I have the first two and am now buying the last one after reading a bit of the PDF I found.
  
  Be warned, the last two books are very large. The second one would probably cover two semesters worth of material. The last one is nearly 1200 pages across two volumes.
  
  The MIT videos are great.
  
  Regardless of the above, Security+ or equivalent would give you a base level of knowledge from which you could get more out of the above materials. You can get Sec+ study guides online cheap/free, either in book or articles or video lecture form. Cybrary has great free cybersec lecture courses including Sec+.

Let's go at this in an order that I feel is appropriate:

Frames Per Second (FPS) are how many frames of an image that is being loaded, rendered, and output to the screen at a given time, specifically seconds. A number, which for most computers and applications is around 1-100+, represent the amount of frames that were loaded in the current second. More things to render means that it will take more power from the graphics processor (GPU) to load the image in front of you. More particles, more 3D objects, and even more moving "entities" and "objects" can create difficulty on the GPU. Adversely, if the GPU is too powerful, and your graphics are too low, it will overcompensate and take longer to create frames, resulting in a choppier/"laggy" screen.

FPS is basically summarized as, "how smooth the video is run." 60fps is always optimal.

In short, Comparing CPUs/GPUs is simply comparing numbers. They both have a "clock speed" measured in Hertz (typically Gigahertz). A CPU is best represented through Clock Speed, Cores, Hyperthreading (Threads), and performance, the last is best measured through real performance tests viewable on most websites. cpuboss.com is one such way to determine the stats and comparison between two CPU chips, and rough estimates for benchmarks.

Graphics Cards (GPUs) are a little crazier. They're measured best by their clock speed, Floating Point Operations Per Second (GFLOPS), Rendering Processors, and RAM. Yes, GPUs have their own RAM. They eat it like spaghetti. Gpucheck has a fairly comprehensive comparison list based on average framerates (FPS) for each card. Obviously, more is better.

It's also good to note that there are Server cards, or Workstation cards, that are usually modified versions of existing consumer graphics cards for certain kinds of performance. In most instances they're much more expensive because of their optimization, but not much else.

Overclocking is the art of pushing the technology to their limit. I don't know too much about it personally due to some of my own concerns.

Linus Tech Tips also has many videos on Comparisons and Build guides, and overclock guides. I'd recommend him first and foremost due to the in-depth level he and his crew ensure for content. Just search on their page "Overclock" and there's a few full-fledged guides.

Everything else is best learned by actually looking it up and having real-world examples. The best place to find just about all of that information is the CompTIA A+ books. The one authored by Mike Meyers is a popular choice. You don't have to take the test accompanied with it, but the book is full of everything you might have questions about, and considered must-know for most techs. I have the Exam Cram variant, and it has everything in the aforementioned copy in a more textbook-like style.

Hope this helped!

I think the first confusion here is that the language is a entity in the construction of a program. Does the type of a house that is built depend on what type of hammer the carpenter used to put up the walls? Or what kind of wrench a plumber used to put together the piping? Sure, the carpenter or plumber could've used a crowbar to do their job, but was it the right tool for the right job?

The right tool to build an Android app is Java. If you need better performance, and you don't need Google APIs, you can include C or C++ to further improve performance at the cost of added complexity.

There are a lot of different abstractions to add the ability to use other languages on the platform, but this comes at the cost of performance, and added potential points of failure (more abstractions = more potential bugs not caused by the coder.)

Heavy number crunching (especially on a RISC architecture) may push the device to its limits. Do yourself a favor and learn how to use the right tool for the right job. This book is both entertaining and informative, and this book will get you started in on C++ in a short amount of time.

C++ is the inspiration for Java, and the creation of Java is what caused C# into being. As such, the syntax for all of these languages are tightly woven between each other. I wouldn't doubt that within 15 minutes of light reading on Java you'll be up and running in its entirety.

C++, while being a slightly more complicated beast, isn't inherently an overly complicated one. The Object-Oriented concepts are all there to be leveraged.

While you say you're not a professional programmer; I think you'll find that broadening the languages you do learn will improve your ability to convey your thoughts and concisely implement them.

Best of luck!

>I want to make more applications...but I don't have any ideas..is there any reading you would recommend me to do?


Have you read Head First Java?

Head First Design Patterns?

The pragmatic programmer?



>I want to be employable...after 3 years doing a computer science course, I feel like I still only know the basics. What Java books do you value most and feel helped you become a much better programmer?


In my particular case, I didn't read books. My interest has been developing web applications, so I have gotten more information from frameworks' documentation an tutorials than from books.


>What are some examples of programs you made when you were 1 or 2 years into your Java programming career?


Hmm... I created some plugins to check on the availability of some servers and services. When it detected those were unavailable, it sent email and SMS alerts to our system administrators. Things got interesting when the email server was down tho.

>What resources would you recommend me reading to understand how to make my android applications able to access the internet..so that users can compare high scores and achievements?


>I have the drive. I love programming and I want to be a successful one. What advice can you give me?


Code as much as you can. Check what kind of applications you want to develop and find which frameworks can help you build them. You don't need to re invent the wheel (unless necessary). Follow the developer's guide and check if there are any tutorials that you can use to improve your knowledge and make better applications in the better way possible.


>Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it. I've felt stuck for days and i honestly did browse a lot before I came here. I've seen a lot of Java developer jobs paying £20-40k but i feel i don't have the relevant experience to even apply to them yet. I feel like i know very little..I.e I have no idea what J2EE is and what it's used for.


From wiki:
"Java Platform, Enterprise Edition or Java EE is Oracle's enterprise Java computing platform. The platform provides an API and runtime environment for developing and running enterprise software, including network and web services, and other large-scale, multi-tiered, scalable, reliable, and secure network applications. Java EE extends the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE)[1], providing an API for object-relational mapping, distributed and multi-tier architectures, and web services. The platform incorporates a design based largely on modular components running on an application server. Software for Java EE is primarily developed in the Java programming language and uses XML for configuration."


If you want to build enterprise web-enabled applications, this is what you should start reading:
J2EE 6 Tutorial
And I always recommend these as well, they helped me a lot when I was learning Java Server Faces:


http://balusc.blogspot.mx/

http://www.mkyong.com/ (He has an Android tutorial that might help with with your interest to develop applications for that OS)

http://www.coreservlets.com/

If you aren't doing well in your current CS courses, I'd highly recommend you focus on your university's courses and do well in them before deciding to bite off more than you can chew. Do some research and look for very basic coding books, not ones like this: https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Brian-W-Kernighan/dp/0131103628/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478891766&sr=8-1&keywords=introduction+to+C+programming

Look for a bit more like this: https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478891799&sr=8-1&keywords=Head+first+java


This depends on what language you are currently learning right now. Don't worry about entering contests and participating in projects or open source coding until maybe second or third year in especially if you haven't had any prior experience. Don't rush yourself into this, you need to make sure you absolutely understand the basics before going into things like hackathons or being very concerned about internships. Take your time learning, and don't enroll onto too many online courses if you think that you can't handle it. Yes, online courses can be helpful, and will only be really helpful if you treat them like real classes. I would advise against code academy or khan academy to learn languages since I've gone through them and they never helped me really grasp CS material better than a book and actual coding. Key here is to code as you go through a book, or else you'll never learn how to actually code. Do tons of simple programs and if you don't understand code bits, don't get frustrated. Copy paste the code, and use a debugger (a bit more advanced but very very helpful) to go through step by step what the code is doing.


Main Points:

1. Don't rush, learn slowly, fully understand each concept before moving on
   
   
   
2. This won't be very intuitive for most people, it's like learning an entirely new thing, but you will eventually hit a wall and learning gets much much easier in the future.
   
   
   
3. Don't do more than one or two online courses, and don't be too concerned about doing any projects or competitions you likely won't be able to understand most project code or any, same goes for competitions until you at least fully know how to code in an industry standard high level language such as C/C++ or Java.
   
   
   
4. There's a lot to do, but don't overwhelm yourself, pause every now and then and focus on a single task
   
   
   Best of luck to you, remember to enjoy the process, and keep in mind that while you might not like coding, CS isn't coding. It's the principles that underlie what we can do with code. A lot of it comes from really basic logic, you will be surprised in the future how easy some things can be to understand with basic step by step thinking.

1. Backups, backups, backups. When things goes wrong (and they will), you need to be able to restore anything that was lost. Redundancy is your friend - backup to tape, backup to the cloud, backup to anything that safely puts the company's data in another location. No use having a closet full of backup tapes and systems if the building burns down.
   
   
2. Practice restores at least once a quarter. In an emergency situation, you need to be confident in your ability to do restores.
   
   
3. Document everything. Test the documentation and refine. Eventually, you want documentation simple enough to use at 2 AM when you're still half asleep and fighting off flaming zombie ninja pirates.
   
   
4. Get good at scripting. If you do something twice, assume you'll do it again (and again) and write a script. The best compliment you can receive as a system admin is to be called 'lazy'. A lazy system admin writes checklists and scripts so they don't have to reinvent the wheel - or can walk someone else through the task on the phone.
   
   
5. Small companies often don't have a change control procedure - create one and use it. Get approval and/or sign off for significant system and network changes like OS upgrades and installing or decommissioning hardware. When it hits the fan, don't become the scapegoat without a paper trail of notification and approval to deflect or absorb some of the blame.
   
   
6. Implement a guaranteed system downtime window for maintenance every month/quarter. Even if you don't need to perform maintenance, disconnect the network. You want to train (mentally condition) management and users to accepting regular preventive maintenance. Every company thinks they need to run 24/7 and few actually do (if the parking lot isn't as full at midnight as it is at noon, they're not a 24/7 company). Scheduled downtime is better than unscheduled downtime because you were accommodating and kept pushing off preventive maintenance.
   
   
7. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless you have a known bug or the patch/upgrade will fix a security flaw, don't upgrade just because a new version comes out. If the application or OS works fine and users aren't screaming for a new feature, keep using it. New versions mean new bugs.
   
   
8. Always be learning and cross-train others when you can. First, the more you learn about other OSes, scripting languages, hardware, etc., the better you get at solving problems because you can learn to look at them differently. Cross-training helps you learn by forcing you to explain how something works to someone else. It's also how you'll be able to convince your boss the place will survive while you take 2 weeks of vacation. My philosophy for the last 30ish years has been to learn something, document it, and teach someone else how to do so I can learn something else. My goal at every company has been to work (scripting and documentation) and train myself out of job.
   
   
9. Read 'The Practice of System and Network Administration'
   https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1517591045&sr=8-3&keywords=The+practice+of+system+administration
   

You are on the right track. The most important to understand is the fundamentals of any programming language. You mentioned Java. Java is an object-oriented programming language. In order to write good code in Java, you will need to learn what is an object? What is object-oriented? Like, what is inheritance, polymorphism, classes, interfaces etc etc. Once you learn the concept of OOP and you want to learn Python (another OOP language), it will be that much faster, because you already understand the concepts. Python has its nuances but you learn as you go along. I think you should start with the Head First series by Oreilly. They are sooo good at teaching this sort of stuff. I will give u the links below:

Head First Java

Head First Object-oriented Analysis and Design

Head First Design Patterns

Buy just the one book and start from there. Checkout the Head First series, you may like other books too. Also, google 'design patterns' and read about it. Some people mention Algorithms and that is all great stuff and you will learn as you write good code. There is another book I would recommend:

Pragmatic Programmer



I would also suggest that you should try different types of programming languages as well. Like functional (LISP or Scheme) or procedural (C). When you do that you will start to think differently and it will expand your knowledge. LISP was created in 1958 by John McCarthy. My friend works at Google and he told me that they are using LISP behind Google Maps.

Wow, 4 years is a long time.
Maybe you simply started with the wrong and especially with too many languages.
I myself made an apprenticeship and learned the basics of Java in 3/4 of a year and after that it was my own desire to advance further. I wanted to learn how to integrate SQL connectors into my code and what I can do with those connectors. So I learned SQL afterwards. After that I learned how to program GUIs with JavaFx and how to develop dynamic generated websites with the Java Swing framework. With this I got the basics of HTML. Please note that all of this was a step by step process.

I haven't used Ruby yet, and my php knowledge can only be described as "I don't want to talk about it", so I can't judge if it's hard or easy to learn, however I do understand from your description that you had a hard time learning those things.

In our modern world, class-based (aka "object-oriented" - short OOP) programming is a key element, so if you want my opinion, no class-based is not the next step, instead I would say it's one of the first steps.

What would I recommend you... hmm, maybe start with Java? It's a highly used language, so if you get what is going on, you will have good chance to get a job. It also helps a lot if you want to understand how OOP works, because Java was basically built around this concept.
I recommend the Book "Head First: Java", I read the german version of it and it was really worth the effort. It clearly explains how OOP works, with examples and a lot of self involvement.

Oh and always stay positive. Being a developer is not something where one day you can say "I'm finally a perfect programmer". Always look back on what you already can do and then look for ways to improve yourself, even if it's not required for your current job. One day you might score bonus points by knowing something that no one else knows and people who score bonus points are always welcome in a company.

Hey OP, I love the enthusiasm, it's what people in this career need! I'd like to provide some advice before the class begins.

I'm in cyber security, participate in pentesting for clients, and visit local security meetups between Miami, Tampa, and Orlando.

Take my advice with a grain of salt as I'm just a person on the internet:

I have the CEH, took it v9. It did nothing for my career. The CEH is basically a memorization exam that doesn't teach practical skills. Some topics include, what tool would you use for this? Or for that?

The CEH's only merit is it complies with the DoD's requirements 8570.01-M requirements. That being said, paying for the bootcamp and the exam will cost a lot of money for little gain. Reason? Many companies hiring for pentesters/red teams overlook the CEH.

CompTIA's Security+ is $339 (you can get it cheaper with a student email/voucher) and once completed, you fulfill the same DoD requirements and you're able to jump into the Cyber Security field. There are free resources on YouTube and a great book on Amazon costs $30.

>But what if I want to get into PenTesting and Exploit Hunting?

Take the OSCP. That certification hold a lot more value as it's a 24 hour exam based on your performance hacking boxes.

The EJPT is also one that hold more weight than the CEH.

And if you can afford it or, preferably, your employer will pay for it, a SANS is highly regarded.

Swing by r/SecurityCareerAdvice - It's a great community willing to help you get that career you want.

My .02 would be to start with the CCNA Route/Switch curriculum and then branch from there. It will give you a very strong foundation to start and allow you to move into pretty much anything (Unified Communications, Video, Security, Service Provider, Data Center ect.)

Get your hands on the following books as well as these lab manuals:

http://www.amazon.com/Routing-Switching-200-120-Official-Library/dp/1587143879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381429380&sr=8-1&keywords=ccna+routing+and+switching

http://www.amazon.com/Routing-Switching-Essentials-Manual-Companion/dp/1587133202/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381429405&sr=8-1&keywords=ccna+routing+and+switching+lab+manual

Next, you will need either some gear or something virtual for you to practice with. If you can't afford actual hardware, get GNS3

http://www.gns3.net/download/

GNS 3 doesn't really do switching (VTP, Spanning Tree, VLAN's) but you can do pretty much anything routing related you need to (especially at the CCNA level).

For switching, you need find Packet Tracer. Packet Tracer will allow you to do pretty much everything with the exception of Frame Relay and more in depth security.

Sorry to promote so much Cisco, but I do draw a paycheck from them every two weeks and they do a great job of making their entry level stuff accessible. If you have any questions, please feel free to message me.

I've been doing desktop support for about 3 years for my university.

I just accepted a full-time offer for a Jr. Sys Admin position, and I'm currently reading this book which was recommended by my future supervisor. A lot of the topics covered in the book are things that I already know, but definitely good refreshers. It covers in great detail the things that any good sys admin needs to understand. If you've got time to read 1200 pages I'd recommend it.

A Jr. Sys Admin position is definitely the way I would go... You'll learn a TON (I know I'm going to and I haven't even started yet) and it can potentially pay very well; mine certainly is.

You may want to check out /r/sysadminjobs if you haven't already. That's actually where I found the job I'm starting in September. :)

1. I use IntelliJ at work and home, not just for Java but for a lot of other things, it has the fastest and best intelligent auto complete I have seen in an IDE and supports a whole tonne of frameworks and programming languages, it's also got some kickass keyboard shortcuts and a nice dark skin.
   However all the main IDEs are good, those are Eclipse, Netbeans and IntelliJ (as far as I am aware). At university you will probably be learning with Eclipse, BlueJ (which I have never used, but is supposed to be educational) or maybe even notepad. If they give you a choice I'd use Eclipse to learn with since it is used by a lot of companies and open source projects.
   
   
2. One thing to watch out for is String comparison using the == operator. The == operator in Java compares memory address and not content of the strings, a quick google search turns up this blog post with some details on Strings in Java. Basically you should use string1.equals(string2) when comparing strings in Java.
   
   
3. Nab a book from your university library or buy one on Amazon/The Book Depository.
   I taught myself it following various tutorials online but the books teach you better practices than those most of the time and are more in depth. Java a Beginners Guide seems highly rated on Amazon and has been kept up to date. When I was at university I saw a few copies of Thinking in Java around but it's a tad out of date now, Head First Java might also be worth a look.
   The videos I used to learn Java were a combination of thenewboston videos (these don't encourage good practices but show a basic way of getting started) and some Java games programming related videos by thecodinguniverse.
   Once you have the basics of Java down, might I also suggest completing the challenges on /r/dailyprogrammer to help get you more comfortable with it.

Personally, I rarely join these organizations for a few reasons. Mostly I feel that they are frequently out of touch and tend to be idealistic, there are rarely speakers or topics of practical use to someone on the job. I understand that most students don't realize this, but being on the job while attending school it really chaps my tender bits.

That said, I am very interested in a decent professional organization provided it meets some requirements.

1. My time is valuable, please do not waste it.
   
   1. I don't mean the schedule has to be completely filled every meeting, or that there should be no time set aside for organization matters; I just feel that a lot of these organizations try to fill the time with banal matters when they have nothing else planned but the "end time" isn't there.
      
2. Show me, Don't tell me.
   
   1. Lectures have their place too, but 9/10 times a practical demonstration is much more informative.
      
3. How does this apply to me?
   
   1. If you want people attending speakers, the topic needs to apply to the audience on a wide scale, which I've seen fall down the tubes. In general this point is followed though in these organizations, but it can't be neglected.
      
4. Don't try to sell me your crappy software when I ask questions about how to do certain things
   
   1. this more applies to the speakers from specific companies that come to my work, however I've seen it happen at organizations like this too. Speaker comes and gets asked question on how the software works, yet spends his entire time marketing his product.
      
5. Please do not be fanboys.
   
   1. I know you think 'software x' is the best thing in the world and 'os y' is the end all be all, but not everyone in the profession feels the same way. An OS agnostic group is the only way to go for these organizations as OS preference is fairly polarizing.
      
6. Finally: Plan in advance.
   
   1. If I have to move my schedule around frequently to attend, I will likely decide it's not worth it.
      
      Now, to go to the actual question presented; What do young professionals want out of an organization like this? this really depends on who you're targeting, those who are in the field will likely be looking for lectures/presentations on best practices, practical examples of deployments of "the next big thing" and hands on training. Those who are in school for this are looking for cool presentations that validate their choice of career, Crazy speakers ("can you get Bill Gates?"), and the stuff I mentioned first. I'm not saying that a person in the field doesn't appreciate that stuff, but the draw for someone in the field is a bit different.
      
      Last, but not least: books are a good draw. I could see offering a nice book for all the 1 year members or a month or two long promotion "join and get this book free." I'm not sure the budget for you guys, but it's an idea. It'll be hard to draw young people until you have a decent amount already no matter what though.
      
      Sorry for the long post
      
      TL;DR: Skip to the paragraph first word "Now" if you want the answer to the actual question.

The CCNA can be taken a few different ways. As 2 exams (ICND1 and ICND2) or 1 exam (CCNAX). The combined exam is mostly for re-certification and for people that have been in a Cisco networking role for a while. Beginners should take the 2 test route. It is only $5 more expensive and will be much easier than the 1 test path.



Taking an instructor-lead class is going to be a crap-shoot. How good it is and how well it prepares you for the exam are ENTIRELY dependant on the instructor. Plus in-person classes are usually expensive. Self-study, in my opinion, is the way to go for almost every certification.


You should always use multiple resources to prepare for any exam. I recommend the following for the CCNA:



Pick up the Wendel Odom OCG (Official Certifiaction Guide). You can get it on Amazon for around $40 for both the INCD1 and INCD2 books. You can also get the /u/lammle book for around $30 on Amazon. The Odom book is considered very dry and hard to read, but has more information and goes deeper into the subjects than the Lammle book does. I personally do not have a problem with the Odom book and have readt it all the way through.



You should also get a video course. There are tons out there (CBT Nuggets, ITPro.TV, INE, Kevin Wallace, etc.). I recommend Chris Bryant's course on Udemy. It usually costs around $12 and is extremely good for the price.



You also need a lab of some kind. The most recommended would be a Hardware lab (with real Cisco routers and switches), GNS3, or Packet Tracer. Obviously a hardware lab is going to be expensive (probably around $300 for a basic one). I use Packet Tracer and while it has it's flaws and limitations it seems to be good enough for the CCNA. On top of that it is FREE. GNS3 is also free but requires that you have your own IOS images to run in it (which are not free unless you go a less-than-legal route to aquire them). There is also INE's lab and Cisco's VIRL but they are very expensive and VIRL requires a pretty beefey machine to run.



Read a book, watch a video course, and lab EVERY concet you can. If you really get stuck and can't figure something out or don't understand something after researching it yourself, come post here and ask. We are always willing to help.

I was in the same boat as you are. I am currently 29 and have been in an IT job now (that I love) for just over a year. I have 0 college classes in technology and a masters in counseling which I plan on never using professionally again.

I was very lucky and was able to acquire a technology position based on my network of friends and people. As I don't have the exact answer for what you are looking for I can tell you that I don't plan on getting a degree in computers but want to acquire my Network+ and Security+ certs as well as VMware eventually. This is my current plan to further my career.

I devoured this guys videos on basics that I needed to catch up on and like him for the most part. He gets on his sandbox alot lately but the original videos are full of great info.

http://www.youtube.com/user/elithecomputerguy

I use the free professor messer videos here...

http://www.professormesser.com/n10-005/free-network-plus/

and I have bought this book!

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-All-In-One-Exam-Guide/dp/0071789227

All of which are great additions to my current job.

I hope you do well in your endeavor....also...

http://recoveringfromreligion.org/

I worked in IT from the age of 18 (well, 14, if you count the freelance PC building work I did from 14-18) to 30, at which point I decided to re-skill and move into another career.

My advice about uni would be: unless you're planning on becoming a programmer, and maybe not even then, don't do it. Seriously.

IT is a lot like a traditional trade in that the most efficient way to learn best practice is to actually experience it on the job. Almost everything they will teach you in uni will be obsolete by the time you finish, or it won't be industry best practice.

I got my foot in the door at a company at 18, while my mates went to uni. By age 20 the company I worked for sent me over to the UK for 3 months to work in their new subsidiary as a senior technical advisor. Meanwhile, my mates hadn't even finished their degrees yet. When they did finally finish, they were taking help desk type jobs, while I was being employed as a systems engineer. And it's not because I was fucking brilliant or anything like that -- there's much more skilled individuals out there than me -- it was because I had 4+ years work experience over them by that point.

If you really do want to study, I would advise finding the industry standard certifications for your chosen area of interest, and doing them instead. For example, if you want to do networking, study for the CCNA exam, then go sit for it. With a CCNA you will get your foot in the door just about anywhere and it's much cheaper than a uni degree. You can find some study materials and exam guides at the following sites:

allITeBooks.com
Udemy / Udacity / EdX
Google 'moocs list reddit' for lists of even more free and paid online courses

I'd also advise you to get some sort of Linux cert. To do that you can get this book:

https://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Seventh/dp/0071841962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523303112&sr=8-1&keywords=jang+linux

Do all of the exercises, labs, and so forth, then go through each portion of each test on https://www.certdepot.net/.

Finally, understand that in order to succeed in this industry, you are going to have to do a lot of self-learning. That means creating a lab at home and fiddling with different equipment/products. If you don't have that sort of natural curiosity and love of learning, then I would suggest you find another career. IT is a field that is constantly changing and in order to stay on the cutting edge, you must do some learning outside of your job.

I hope this has been of some use to you.

Oh you're very welcome!

For resumes, the cleaner the better. You want it to stand out, but, please, do not make it flashy. When I was a technical support supervisor, I was able to assist with the hiring and interview of techs. First we'd run through the resumes and throw out the ones that were covered in glitter, fancy paper, bright paper, and this one was covered in Windows logos... the paper was watermarked with a Windows logo and even the bullet points were Windows logos (we were a Windows-based web hosting company). These kind of resumes leave a bad taste in your prospective employer's mouth. Here's a great template that is similar to how I have my professional resume setup. Minus the sidebar and the header (this stuff I just placed at the top of the page formatted like all the other sections with the exception of my name and contact info), this pretty much lines up how you should have a professional resume. This one is probably a better example. I'd also suggest getting a LinkedIn profile if you don't already and mirror your professional resume on there. Head hunters do frequent LinkedIn and you could get a future job offer from there as well.

I would focus on getting your A+ and Network+ upfront because they substitute some experience. Just take note that CompTIA has changed the tests so that re-certification every 3 years (I think) is required to keep your cert(s) in good standing. This book is shipping in August, and should be considered the Holy A+ Bible. It is pricy ($60), but worth it. Before I get too further along, it's worth mentioning that the A+ is 2 parts. Part 1: Hardware, Part 2: Software (Windows). I heard rumors that CompTIA was supposed to finally axe Windows 9X from the exam (yes, I know... you have/had to know Windows 95 for the exam...) but no idea if they actually did or not. This guide seems like a great starting ground.

I used the "Exam Cram" series which include several practice tests along with lesson reviews and chapter tests. But there are a wide variety. I'd really suggest going to your local Barnes & Nobel and browsing the selection of A+ and Network+ books they have and find one you feel will help you learn the most out of.

Let me know if you have any questions!

/r/learnprogramming has a lot of great articles pinned. Python is a easy language to learn to start off. But if you want to hit the ground running, either learn web development languages or C++. From what I know though, when people refer to IT, they are referring those working in Networking or Help desk. With Networking, you learn a lot about computer/router hardware in the beginning, and then move onto learning protocols and best practices. Granted that second part is massively understating what there is out there to learn. But the sky is the limit when it comes that field. Help desk is the entry level for IT personnel. You help people over the phone or in-person with their computer related problems. Lots of networking guys don't like this because you loose whatever faith in humanity you have left, some like myself, really enjoy it. I like helping people either in a jam, or just generally better understand how to do their job with the aid of technology.

Sorry for the length.

TL;DR

Grab a A+ certification and then try for a Help Desk position. Here is a good book to get your education started, [Comptia A+ from Amazon].(http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Edition-220-801-220-802/dp/007179512X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382805315&sr=8-1&keywords=comptia+a%2B+certification+all-in-one+exam+guide+eighth+edition+exams+220-801+%26+220-802)

For A+, try Professor Messer's site. His videos are an amazing resource. I do a chapter in book study then watch the corresponding video on Messer's site. Works pretty well.

Also try Coursera, they have a lot of classes you can take for FREE from major universities. I am currently waiting on a networking class that starts June 24th. It's a high level class that offers a good amount of knowledge. No degree, but the knowledge is what you will need during interviews. And like u/esmith3498 said, F.R.E.E.!

Professor Messer - This is for 800 exams for a+, he also has training for net + and linux and the like.

Coursera - Use it!

A+ book - I love this book, very thorough.

GOOD LUCK!!! I am in the same boat as you. I am currently trying to get into the field too.

Everyone is telling you to get a different cert, but I say since you're asking about Network+ you should stay your course and get it. While CCNA is the gold standard that doesn't mean there's no reason to get a N+ or that it is somehow worthless. IMHO if you're going to be a general IT guy and not specialize in networks there isn't a reason to go through the hassle of a CCNA. Get your N+ to get your feet wet and build your confidence then decide whether you wish to go further with a CCNA/JNCIA. People seem to think they're magical golden tickets to Wonka's IT Factory, but the truth is they're not especially with no experience to back them.

To answer your actual question you can go with CBTNuggets and/or one of the Network+ Books to prepare. N+ isn't difficult and it will help you get a cert that is adequate to show someone who isn't a specialist is at least competent in general networking as well as build your confidence. Good luck!

Edit: If you ever watch videos or discussions by networking professionals if you look at their alphabet soup you will usually see Network+ right along with their CCNP/IE and other certs. It shows that even seasoned veterans still pick it up.

Senior Security Engineer

Hi, I'm Kevin Hock and I work on the DataDog security team.
We are looking for some talented security engineers to join our security team here in NYC.

How Do I Apply

Send me an email with your resume and GitHub at kh@datadoghq.com

What you will do

• Perform code and design reviews, contribute code that improves security throughout Datadog's products
  
• Eliminate bug classes
  
• Educate your fellow engineers about security in code and infrastructure
  
• Monitor production applications for anomalous activity
  
• Prioritize and track application security issues across the company
  
• Help improve our security policies and processes
  
  Who you should be
  
  
• You have significant experience with network and application security
  
• You can navigate the whole stack in pursuit of potential security issues
  
• You want to work in a fast, high growth startup environment
  
  Bonus points
  
  
• You contribute to security projects
  
• You're comfortable with python, go and javascript. (You won't find any PHP or Java here :D)
  
• CTF experience (I recommend you play with OpenToAll if you don't have any)
  
• Program analysis knowledge
  
  Sample interview questions
  
  
• Flip to a page of WAHH, TAOSSA, CryptoPals, ask you about it.
  
• Explain these acronyms DEP/ASLR/GS/CFI/AFL/ASAN/LLVM/ROP/BROP/COOP/RAP/ECB/CBC/CTR/HPKP/SSL/DNS/IP/HTTP/HMAC/GCM/Z3/SMT/SHA/CSRF/SQLi/DDoS/MAC/DAC/BREACH/CRIME?
  
• How would you implement TCP using UDP sockets?
  
• How do you safely store a password? (Hint: scrypt/bcrypt/pbkdf2)
  
• How does Let'sEncrypt work?
  
  Hat tip to Levi at SquareSpace, also on this thread, he is an awesome person to work with. David Wong, a crypto king of NCC, on this very Q4 thread, is also a great person to work with in Chicago.
  If you're looking to break stuff more than build stuff hat tip to Chris Rohlf's Yahoo! team.
  Random other places you can apply in nyc: MongoDB, Jane Street, 2 sigma, greenhouse.
  
  
  I personally applied because I love Python but I like the company a lot so far.

Absolutely. I did have a leg up in that sales really helped me to hone my social/communication skills, so I was confident once I got an interview somewhere.

But start building a home lab, tinkering, and learning now - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1587205815/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CgmmDbD770ACA
There might be a better resource, but this is how I passed my first exam.

Initiative seems to be well regarded in this field.

I got this job, which is WAY more than I was led to believe was possible for essentially a first time IT job, with the most basic Cisco cert. I worked with a few recruiting agencies and found a good fit, then they helped me get this interview. Offered the job the next day. Which is to say it's more than doable, and honestly, avoid helpdesk if you can, especially if you're looking at networking. Look for NOC analyst or tech. Hope this helps at all. Good luck, and if you have questions down the road, feel free to ask and hopefully I can answer them!

Thanks for the feedback.

On my first pass to the CCNA Exam, I used the following approach:

1. Attend to the Todd's CCNA 200-120 class in Dallas.
   
2. Read his book provided in the class. See URL below.
   
   http://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Routing-Switching-Study-Guide/dp/1118749618/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
   
   
3. Completed the 14 videos training modules available on lammle.com as prerequisite to attend to the live class in Dallas.
   
   Note: If you buy the book then you get free access to the first 7 video training modules. You can buy a subscription on the web site to get access to the other 7 modules. Or you get it for free when you register to the live or online class.
   
   
4. In the class every day, we had the opportunity to get the lecture from Todd, hands on labs, written exercises and online sample tests.
   
   The three big lessons learned from the class were:
   
   
5. Every question is a subnet question. As a result, we must learn to subnet any class in less than 10 seconds.
   
6. The block size is your friend.
   
7. Cisco likes to use words that look the same and have opposite meaning. As a result, one must read the questions and select answer with accuracy.
   
   I failed the first time that I took the test. I ran out of time with 5 questions not answered. I invested a lot of time on the sim's and test-lets. I was lost in the test platform with many windows opened learning to navigate to the proper pannel to answer the questions.
   
   On my second pass to the CCNA Exam, I used the following approach:
   
   
8. Todd invited me to attend to the next CCNA class using the Webx online option. I accepted the invitation.
   
   
9. Complete all the exercises.
   
   
10. Invest a lot of time doing the online sample test from lammlee.com.
    
    
11. Repeat step 3 and master every question asked until I got 100% every time that I took a sample test.
    
    
12. Master the top 5 Sim's provided in the class for OSPF, EIGRP, NAT, ACL, etc.
    
    
13. Pay attention to all the tips provided by Todd when doing the Sims.
    
    I took the test and got a perfect score. I also had 25 minutes left on the clock.
    
    Summary:
    One needs to use the right tools, resources and approach to study very hard. The number one key is to focus on the test objectives and practice doing many sample tests.
    
    This approach helped me pass the CCNA 200-120 test. Anything else is just busy work and nice to know for the real world application and not to pass the test.
    
    Please note that each person learns in a different way or may have special networking skills and may not need to use the same approach.
    
    I hope this information is of value to help you get the CCNA certification.
    
    May you all have an awesome future in the Data Networking industry.
    
    JM
    

As a former programming teacher, I'll have to second Udacity here (over coursera and codecademy), but I'll admit Java isn't my first choice for teaching how to program, and Udacity seems to share my view by teaching mostly python and javascript courses.

Honestly, mobile development is one of the harder areas to work in, so to start with it is gonna be a steep learning curve, but I'm not gonna try and dissuade you from it if that's what you want to do, just mentioning it to comfort you by letting you know that it'll be completely normal if you end up feeling frustrated and lost for a good while. Hopefully it won't take too long for things to 'click' though.

That being said, one of my favorite teaching resources is Learn Python The Hard Way (don't mind the name, it's written for total beginners, but has a unique teaching style that I really like). Obviously it's not in java, but it's great for giving you a general idea of what programming even is.

As for Java specifically, Head First Java was my bible when I was first learning it ages ago. Really accessible style, mostly conceptual, but all very important.

Once you have that down maybe you can tackle more Android-specific stuff, but looking too deeply into Android code before you have a firm grasp of major programming ideas might confuse/frustrate you more than necessary, so don't worry too much if it happens. Just my precautionary advice, but feel free to make your own path...

Hopefully you can find some helpful answers, guidance, or a starting point in these responses.


From OP:

>The exact four books I read are:

>Learning Obj-C

>Learning Java

>iOS Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

>Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide

>However, I would now recommend learning Swift instead of Obj-C. At the time when I was looking into iOS books, good books on Swift were few and far between.

From u/AlCapwn351 in regards to other sources to learn from:

>www.codeacademy.com is a great site for beginners (and it's free). It's very interactive. W3schools is good for learning stuff like JavaScript and HTML among other things.

>When you get stuck www.stackoverflow.com will be a lifesaver. Other than that, YouTube videos help and so do books. Oh and don't be afraid to google the shit out of anything and everything. I feel like an early programmers job is 90% google 10% coding.

>Edit:

>It's also good to look at other peoples code on GitHub so you can see how things work.

> I asked for personal recommendations.

No. No, you didn't.

Scroll back up there and read the actual words you provided to us.

Here, let me help you:

> I am looking for an additional resource (preferably a text book because for some god forsaken reason, text books are the only books I enjoy to read) for a secondary CCNA source.

That is not a personalized request. That's a shotgun blast.

What resources have you discovered on your own? Which resources seemed interesting to you? Can we help you choose between a specific list of things you've found?

When you read the FAQ over in /r/ccna what did you think of their recommended reading list?

When you ask a broad, unfocused question like that and don't provide any evidence or indication that you've done any research or put any effort into it, it comes across as laziness.

Compare these two sentences examples:

"I want to get my CCNA. Can someone suggest a book on the subject?"

or

"I want to get my CCNA. I read <blog> and <article> and I see lots of positive comments for these two books <URL> and <URL>, but I also hear good things about CBTNuggets. Can someone help me choose? I really only want to spend about $100 on this."

See how that first example gives us nothing to work with, and makes us ask all the questions & do all the work for you?

See how the second example puts more of the work effort on you to explain the situation and help us understand what you've already done to find this answer on your own?

That is what effective communication looks like when you are communicating via electronic text. You might make a note of it.

-----

The two most popular books on CCNA R&S are:

The two books from Wendell Odom, part of the official Cisco Press offering:

ICND1
ICND2

And the Todd Lammle books:

CCNA Routing and Switching Complete Study Guide

Here are a few helpful resources to help you out.


Firstly, you probably need a beginners grasp on Java. For that, I would highly recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-2nd-Edition/dp/0596009208

You do not need to go through the entire book, But it would be more helpful to you.

Secondly, I highly recommend this android book:
http://www.amazon.com/Android-Programming-Ranch-Guide-Guides/dp/0321804333

They literally walk you step-by-step.


However, if you do not feel you can teach yourself programming there is always this option:
http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/
I haven't personally messed around with it but it doesn't require any programming experience.



Here is a free online class that starts tomorrow if you have the time.
https://www.coursera.org/course/androidpart1

or this one that is already finished but you can still access the material.
https://www.coursera.org/course/androidapps101

You could also go at your own pace through it.


Here is also a udemy course that also teaches you java. I would get it now before the price goes back up to 200 bucks.
https://www.udemy.com/android-lollipop-complete-development-course/?dtcode=hfFhrtG2ans8

I haven't personally taken it, but a friend of mine has and he loves it.




Basically, just start reading and learning. The big nerd ranch book that I listed has some really great beginner apps that teach you the basics.



Persistence is the key. Don't give up, fight through the pain. Google like crazy.It's worth it, trust me.

Since you've dipped your toes in the M$ stream, I would suggest working towards the 2012 MCSA. It's 3 exams and is the go to 'asked for' cert on sys admin jobs. Each exam is $150 and it will require you to lab on your own, among other things.

You mentioned Linux...the CompTIA Linux+ is comprised of two exams but you end up getting 4 or 5 certs altogether (but only 2 [L+ and LPIC-1] are worth a shit). If you've never worked with *nix before this one will be a challenge. Interesting fact: this cert never expires.

And then...the easiest of the beginner certs--CompTIA's Security+. This is also a standard for many junior security positions and is required for many federal government contracting gigs. Just buy Darril Gibson's book and watch Professor Messer's videos and you'll be good to go. This is only one exam.

The CCENT is the entry-level Cisco networking exam. I recommend Todd Lamle's book for that. Some might suggest getting CompTIA's Network+ first but I would recommend going straight for the CCENT, then CCNA if you like the material and want to get deeper into networking.

For all of these...yes, you will have to study. The MCSA 2012 will take the longest and the Security+ should be the shortest. Use your downtime wisely.

Edit: unless you're in a dire financial situation, certs are by far the easiest and most economical form of resume boosting...invest in yourself.

Learning electronics is a lot like music. There is an insane amount of information, but if you get an economic working knowledge under your belt, you can really do some amazing things. In order for you not to get lost in the rabbit hole, I will provide you these methods of learning practical hobby electronics.

First, is simply just a suggestion. There are two "domains" of electronic thinking and analysis: digital and analogue. Fuck analog right in its dumb face. The math used in analog is fucking super duper hard, and analog circuits are prone to interference problems. Digital is where you want to be. It's vastly simpler to use programmable digital parts, and analyze digital circuits. Don't get lost in AC equations of capacitor, or the god damned transistor equation (seriously, fuck that. )

Okay here is how I learned hobby digital electronics:
First buy this, and go through all the examples in the workbooks. When you learn electronics you 100% HAVE TO DO HANDS ON LEARNING! DONT LEARN IT FROM A BOOK! MAKE CIRCUITS!
https://www.amazon.com/Radio-Shack-Electronics-Learning-20-055/dp/B00GYYEL8I

At the same time, read this (which is a good topical explanation, and free):
http://jacquesricher.com/NEETS/

And buy and read this (which is an EXCELLENT formal introduction into the physics):
https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Electronics-Inventors-Third-Scherz/dp/0071771336

Also you are going to learn how to program, which is an entirely different topic. Programming and hobby electronics make you a master of the universe, so it's worth it. I learned programming in the electronics domain and it was awesome. I made a microcontroller FM synthesizer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TvuzTK3Dzk

So basically, the way I learned programming in general was self-teaching with books. Again, you have to do it hands-on. Actually complete the examples in the books, and you'll be fine.
First, learn procedural c programming using C primer plus. Buy an older version so it'll be super cheap:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0672326965/ref=sr_1_3_twi_pap_1_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465827790&sr=1-3&keywords=c+primer+plus

Next, learn Object oriented programming using head first java. They do a great job of tackling OOP, which can be a difficult thing to learn.
https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1465827860&sr=1-1&keywords=head+first+java


You're overwhelmed because they're deep topics. But, seriously, its the most fun shit ever. You'll love learning how to do it.

The CompTIA A+ All in one exam book is what helped me when I took the older versions (https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479940713&sr=8-1&keywords=comptia+a%2B) It's $35 for it new, but if you can find a used copy for cheap, go for it. You'll want to supplement your learning between the Professor Messer videos (which are free) with a good certification book such as the one I mentioned.

Since it is a 2-part exam, this will mean you will need to purchase 2 exam vouchers. I know usually on Professor Messers website, he will have discount codes you can use to take off a bit of the cost towards the voucher. The vouchers are what really make it pricey, which is why I strongly urge that you really make sure you are ready for the exams before you go and take them since they are not refundable.

Congrats in advance on having a kiddo and good luck with your studies. This subreddit is pretty great to ask questions and get studying advice.

Here is messer's sec+ video list. Here is ExamCompass, it's a link to the first test, notice below are 23 more free tests and 9 drill down topic tests. Here is, Darril Gibson's certification book, the best book on the subject.

I scored a 795 just last week on Sec+. I recommend Darril Gibson's book totally and completely. It currently costs 23 bucks on amazon prime but comes with a 10% discount for your test voucher so it literally pays for itself.

ExamCompass is great to figure out what sections you are week on, the topic tests will give you the best idea of where you need help or you can refer to your post-test printout.

Messer's videos are great to watch at 1.25 - 1.5 speed to better understand areas of weakness.

I used Mike's practice tests on udemy but didn't use any of his videos or his book for Sec+. He tends to spend too much time outside the test materials for me. I totally get why he does that and it's great to understand how these technologies came about and some of the depth as to why they are and do what they do but.... fuck man I'm just trying to get a cert, ya' know? I'm currently using his book for Net+ and I can't for the life of me get through it.

I few years ago my youngest brother got his first IT job, and he fell right into an admin role. He too is very sharp. I bought him the following books as a gift to get him started...

The Practice of System and Network Administration, SecondEdition - a few years old but has lots of fundamentals in there, still well worth reading. Hoping for a third edition someday.

Tom Limoncelli's Time Management for System Administrators

I see others have recommended this great book, and I wholehartedly agree: UNIX and Linux System Adminstration, 4th Edition. I was sad when Evi's ship was lost at sea last year. :-( You could tell she loved sailing old wooden ships... just look at the cover. A great loss; she did so much for our community.

Additionally, I will second or third anyone recommending works by Brendan Gregg. I got the Kindle version of Brendan's Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud. I really like this book. It was written to be a good foundational book for the next several years. I am planning to get a hard copy version too. While you're at it, check out these links...

Brendan Gregg:
http://www.brendangregg.com/
http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html
https://github.com/brendangregg/perf-tools
http://lwn.net/Articles/608497/
http://www.brendangregg.com/USEmethod/use-linux.html

Tom Limoncelli:
http://everythingsysadmin.com/

Introduce him not only to books, but online resources and communities like /r/linuxadmin :-)

Cheers!

You sound motivated! First off you definitely won't stay at the same company. You certainly don't "need" to go to college. Get yourself a book for red hat certification, or whatever you think you might be interested in, like this https://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Seventh/dp/0071841962
And then get to reading and implement everything in the book on a computer at home in your free time. You can easily setup a CentOS VM(google!) to practice everything in the book. By the time you're done you'll have a a decent concept of how everything in the book works. Then do the same for Microsoft if you so wish, MCSA book+practice. Cannot stress enough that you have to actually make the thing work on a real server(s) or it won't stick with you and it won't make a whole lot of sense. It's time consuming, but it's still going to be way faster(and cheaper) than a college course and the struggle of figuring out things yourself will make you remember it.

As far as attracting employers, well, someone's gonna have to take a chance on you. If there's internal positions you can apply to that would be good, you aren't an unknown entity and if you ramp up your knowledge on the tech it will be obvious to those who are in a position to give you a chance. If you go internal, you won't get a raise worth a crap, you're gonna have to change companies, but by then you'll have some real experience under your belt and can command a higher salary. If you actually go and take the tests and get the certifications, you have a better chance of getting hired somewhere else in a junior position. What I like to ask in interviews is "how much opportunity will I have to work with X technology?" If it's a straight taking calls day in day out with no interfacing with the engineering groups then pass, but if it's a closer knit type of deal where you're just one cube over from the guy deploying production servers, jump on it!

I would suggest that the carlh programming guides is not a bad idea then!

I would heavily suggest learning C well - this is a language that was designed to stay close to the hardware while being portable, and is a very small language. So, buy a copy of the K&R Book, ever C programmer has one.

Then, Patterson's book is a tome for computer engineering. It'll show you assembly, all the way down to NAND gates.

I would suggest you start by watching and working through Berkeley's CS61C course. It's the logically second course in CS, and after a quick overview of C it dives into the machine itself. Website here, videos here. Also, Dan Garcia is an excellent lecturer.

Once you have all the machine details down, you'll probably feel hampered by your actual program wizardry. This is where you start looking into algorithms and data structures. Your go-to guide here is probably Cormen's Introduction to Algorithms since it handles both data structures and algorithms. It's definitely more of a theoretical/CS-ey book, so if this is not what you want, then Head First Java will teach you a new language (and learning more languages is one of the best ways to grow as a programmer!) and also do many data structures. In fact, you can get both those books and have the light side and the serious side of programming books.

At this point you should be well equipped to go off in whatever direction you want with programming. Start contributing to open source projects! Find things that interest you and try to solve problems! Being a part of the programming community will be your biggest aid in both learning programming and starting to make money through it. People pay for programmers that they know can deliver, and success in the open source world means a lot, and you don't need to go to school for it to get to this point!

Lastly, many CS/programming folks hang out on IRC. If you have questions, find the appropriate IRCS channels and go talk to people. Good luck and welcome to programming!

I hear ya man. I guess I'll vent with ya sorry for the long post.

I'm in the same boat 25 and don't know where to fully go career wise with a shitty job. I work in a call center scheduling boiler inspections, while dispatching for inspectors who also do an insane amount of driving at ridiculous times. But god damn 130 miles fuck that, and I thought my 40-45 min commute was bad! My hat is off to you guys for putting up with that amount of driving.

So after graduating college with a BA degree telecommunications thinking that I would get a job in that field such as network engineer/technician, line installer, PBX tech doing MACs (term for moves, adds and changes when programming telephones and other equipment) within the first 6 months of graduation. Yep that was a naive rookie mistake to when I found out all about CCNA certifications and all that other shit where you have to spend around $120 to take an exam after studying this book or you could spend another $3000 for that education. I wasn't ready for that after graduating in 2013. I was exhausted learning after 5 years of college (it was a 4 year program but I took it easy my sophomore year in college trying to figure what I wanted to do along with what would most likely get me a job that I could live off of while working part time).

All I can say is this after 2 years from graduating find what you can to get by, if you can't tolerate that job anymore find something else. It's really fucking hard I know I've been trying to get out of this call center position for nearly 7 months now. Before that call center position I was delivering pizzas for 8 months. Then when you can find a position that you can live off of and tolerate for a while then pursue that in your free time what you need to do for the career you want. Lately I've been getting into the crazy wonderful world of coding and web development. It's hard of course which means it's worth something, but I learn most of the material for free. If I told my 20 year old self that he would've said "Yea right grizzly adams had a beard." (feel free to end the joke). However, I haven't been learning that much code since I can't take this call center position anymore so I'm focusing on finding a new job away from this shitty boring area I'm in (King of Prussia, PA area it's boring suburbia). When I find a new position that I can tolerate where I'm not on the phone all day, then I'll pursue and develop skills on being a web developer and build a portfolio of a couple websites showing exquisite HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python and jQuery skills then I'll start applying to web developer jobs.

So build my friend, it takes time but build there is still time.

Even though I wish colleges could help us out more career networking wise they just throw us out on the fucking street and ask oh do you want football season tickets? Then I say sure how about you get me a job you pricks and I may be entitled but when I pay $86,000 I expect results. I remember going to a college savings plan meeting and hearing the presenter saying "Colleges are first and foremost a business". Yea well I'm the customer, I went to college to get a career in telecommunications not to deliver pizzas and work in a call center.

You're definitely going to have to have a good working knowledge of Java (or some other similarly-structured OO-language like C#). That's honestly the biggest hurdle.

For that purpose, I recommend Head First Java. It's actually a book you can read straight through (if a bit goofy), but it does a better job of teaching Java and OO concepts better than anything I've ever come across.

After that, it's pretty much developer.android.com all the way home. Best of luck!

I know this is a couple days old now but I've worked for a couple companies as a security analyst, and I feel like a lot of the answers so far are geared toward pen testing, which isn't what the interns at either organization do/did.

There's no question that knowing all the stuff others have suggested will come as a help, but most of our interns needed information more along the lines of the Security+ cert. The Security+ won't make anyone an expert but it contains a whole lot of information that will be used on the day to day. Things like tcp vs udp, common ports, terminology like IDS and IPS. Discussion about host based vs network based protection. I'm not really saying "go get this cert" so much as, "understand the general domains of this cert".

If you want to look into it, this is a pretty decent book, $10 on kindle (more in print) or you can probably find it at a library for free.
http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Certified-Ahead-SY0-401/dp/1939136024/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425426900&sr=8-1&keywords=security%2B+book

A tool that I've used every single day at both places is wireshark. You don't need to be a Jedi to use it, but knowing some simple stuff with it really will help.

Like others said, a background in Linux will help. Wget/curl are convenient for analysis.

> what schools offer courses where I can finish within a few months?

The School of Hard Knocks. Read a chapter a night and work through the exercises. Please don't go to school for a year and throw away a bunch of money to get an A+.

> seeing what I am good at and improving on within 2 years. I have three different areas where I might be able to get into (pharm, business, computer) and the experience and knowledge as well as room for improvement and the speed of getting really good at one of them and finding whether I enjoy one of them or not.

This is exactly what I advised you not to do. Deferring this decision for another two years is the easy way out, and it's going to hurt you big time.

For the sake of argument, say you do end up in IT. You're 25 years old. Most of your peers entered the workforce 2-3 years ago, so they already have a considerable amount of professional experience compared to you. Extend that out another two years, and you're already half a decade behind everyone else right out of the gate. On top of that, most of those people have had a lifelong passion for technology and spent their formative years immersing themselves in the subject matter so that when the time came to start their careers, they were already ahead of the curve.

How do you intend to win the race by delaying your start even further than you already have? You're already behind, and the answer is not to sit at the starting line and debate what brand of running shoes are most comfortable while your opponents begin lapping you.

If you start now and focus exclusively on one field, you still have a chance to catch up. If you keep waiting around and waffling for much longer, you'll be left in the dust. This isn't just true in IT - it applies pretty much universally in the professional world.

The A+ is an entry level cert, it's only "a joke" because it's entry level, the same way a HighSchool diploma is. If you can find an employer who can pay for it, great! (I did). IMO it gives you a good experience in how these certs work. Everyone recommends Professor Messer. I would recommend visiting /r/CompTIA to see what questions people have and what they struggled with. The book I read did not prepare me for a question regarding how to repair the Masterboot record (bootrec /FixMbr). But reading a book can be good too, Mike Myer goes but further in depth then is needed imo, but learning more is never an issue. Printers will be asked, I didn't think so but I messed up on them (I was asked about impact printers and had to guess).

I think you're looking at an old practice test as I took the 802 and don't remember anything about floppies. There were questions about Windows XP and a general question about IOS 6. The questions they ask are usually pretty general. They don't ask you about interrupts, maybe the basics of what a driver does, but I don't believe it would go further into it. Maybe a question relating to using a new driver to fix a problem. My book went indepth on how a processor communicates with RAM and vice versa. As well as HDD sectors vs tracks (was too indepth, and those Q's never asked).

A+ is very general, Network + is specific to networking, but again pretty general and entry level. If it helps you get your foot in the door, it's not "useless". A+ and Network+ would create a good base to start moving up from. The big thing is that they need to be renewed (tests retaken) every 3 years. So maybe try to aim for having a higher level cert in 3 years time so you don't need to renew your A+.

So for studying, Mike Myers Book
and Professor Messer would be good material. I just read the book and it was incredibly vague compared to what was on the test (general knowledge mostly). But it comes with a practice CD too.

also, everything /u/VA_Network_Nerd said.

You are on the right track. Get your A+ cert, prof. messer has great videos that helped me:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG49S3nxzAnnmMVTdd4v4ryJ7_qoQCrF4
and this book:
http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-220-801-220-802-Exam-Edition/dp/0789749718

With your A+ cert you can go to sites like justanswers.com and register as a professional to help people on there for experience. Also guru.com and other freelance work will help when it comes to the next part.

Work on your resume, taking your work experience and molding it to show off your IT experience. For example: you said you worked retail, so take your customer support and your interaction with the POS (assuming it was computer based) and put something like: maintained point of sale computer, various printers, payment processing terminals, and peripheral devices. Basically anything even remotely IT related, make it relevant, and apparent that you have extensive knowledge with it.

I personally would NOT go for a "school" like centriq or ITT or any of that crap. You can get into entry level positions with certs and work your way up far faster and cheaper. Get on linkedIn and create a profile if you don't already have one. This will help you network, and search for jobs. Depending on what you can get, you might have to start with a help desk type position to get more experience. The idea entry level IT job for you to aim for (that you can work your way up with) would be a technical support analyst doing tier 1 work.

You can do this, and if you have any questions or anything feel free to hit me up.

A lot of what has been suggested is great for learning linux. Realize that "out there" very little is served out of a single box (and if it is you're doin it wrong). Production infrastructure likely looks and acts very very differently from your home linux workstation. Just because you know how to type sudo apt-get install apache2 does not mean you are ready for a full ops position... BUT - if you put in the wrench time and pay your dues, you will get there.

Here are some areas that would be good to build your knoweldgebase up in...

• First and foremost - you must build the ability to learn how to figure things out and build an intuition of what to inspect should something not be working. This comes from having a working knowledge of many different systems in a large heterogeneous environment. This will come with experience.
  
• Learn some of the rapid deployment frameworks - cobbler, puppet, cfengine, etc... No one sits around configuring each and every production machine from scratch.
  
• Now that you are familiar with (presumably) the installation and configuration of apache, start thinking about setting up caching/proxy infrastructure. Get a sense for what to use for load balancing v.s. caching v.s. increasing availability (and some combination of the three). Become familiar with things such as nginx, mod_proxy, haproxy, squid, varnish, mongrel, etc...
  
• You MUST know how dns works. Crickets bind and dns should be considered required reading. Any lack of understanding of how dns works is simply unacceptable for a proper sysadmin.
  
• this book is required reading, period.
  
• You must become familiar with centralized authentication mechanisms. Most systems utilize something called PAM. Learn how to configure PAM to reference slapd, AD, etc... Kerberos is our current preferred central authentication mechanism, you need to know how to bounce kerberos tickets around. Get slapd (OpenLDAP) up on its legs.
  
• When running a linux kernel, learn how to configure netfilter. Under linux, Netfilter is the thing responsible for routing, nat, and packet filtering. Understand that other kernels do not use netfilter (or commonly use something else). Become familiar with the common kernels firewall, routing, and forwarding system(s). Don't make the mistake of saying "the iptables firewall..." in the interview room! Iptables is not a firewall.
  
• Know your basic networking. Internet core protocols should be added to your list of required reading. Understand the differences between a hub, bridge, switch, and router. Learn how to "subnet", which means knowing your binary math! I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a messed up network because someone didn't know how to figure out /27 and keyed in the wrong values from a "subnet calculator". Along with networking do a bunch of reading/research on vlans, trunking and stp. Most people cannot tell you what a L2/3 managed switch is or how it differs from a "dumb" switch or router. Don't be one of those people! Learn how to configure routing protocols such as BGP, RIP and OSPF (also, learn basic computational graph theory). You may not end up doing a whole lot of networking, but it's really good stuff to know.
  
• Virtualization is important. You need to know the different forms of virtualization (desktop v.s. os-level v.s. para v.s. hyper virtualization). If you are keen to linux, you need to know how xen and kvm work (this is typically what commercial vps's typically use). Also look at vmware and virtualbox for desktop virt. For os-level virtualization, you need to know how to use LxC and jails.
  
• Learn how LVM works! Spend some time familiarizing yourself with LVM2 (linux), vinum (BSD), and ZFS's container framework (Solaris/BSD). Know how and when to use raid. Make sure you understand the implications of the different raid configurations.
  
• Learn common backup methodology. Raid is not backup, don't make this mistake.
  
• Get used to doing everything on the command line, and always think "what if I had to do this on 20,000 servers?".
  
  So off the top of my head there's a bunch of things you could study. I think that's quite a bit to get your head around, and a deep understanding of some of these topics will only come from working experience. There may be a LOT of work to do in some of those areas. Getting a fully functional xen (or kvm) based system up and on it's legs is not an easy task for the uninitiated. It is my opinion (and everyone else is free to disagree with me) that all good sysadmins/ops/engineers need to "grow up" in some area of lower level technical position. That can be a jr. admin position, the helldesk, or whatever else... This will give you the "systems" working experience that will let you branch into a full fledged admin/op position. Getting some certs under your belt can help you get in the door, but by all means isn't required. Cert's cost money and (the ones worth getting) take time. Personally, I tend to stray away from places that make a big deal out of certs... but that's just me.
  
  tl;dr: Learn how to learn. Pick something you don't know how to do and leverage a linux system to accomplish that goal - rinse and repeat.
  

I saw someone posting Head First Java and you might want to take a look at this thread and this thread in regards to that book. Here's my opinion from those threads:

Headfirst Java was published in 2005. It's 13 years old. If you're looking to learn Java, there are plenty of excellent resources that also cover the latest features of the language:

• Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures: Comprehensive Version, 11th Edition
  by Y. Daniel Liang (2017) - It's a textbook, but very well written. You could probably get by with an older version as well. I got my start with his book and you will learn a lot of core programming fundamentals along with the Java programming language. I highly recommend it.
  
  
• Java: A Beginner's Guide, 7th Edition by Herbert Schildt (2017) - Official Java tutorial from Oracle
  
  
• Core Java Volume I - Fundamentals, 10th Edition by Cay S. Horstmann (2016) - Supposedly very good.
  
  
• Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6th Edition by Tony Gaddis (2015) - Another textbook. Supposedly good. I used Gaddis' C++ textbook for my Intro to Computer Science class and liked it well enough.
  
  Eventually you'll want to pick up Effective Java, 3rd Edition by Joshua Bloch (2018) - This is the 3rd edition of his book which is regarded as somewhat of a bible for advanced Java techniques.

Professor Messer for the best free online resource and videos.

Mike Meyers' Exam Guide for the best print resource. It's a book. Whatever price you decide to pay for it, or not, is up to you.

Of course there are other options and resources, but these were great for me. And there could be something else out there that works better for you. Either way, hope this helps and good luck!

Scripting languages, like Ruby or Python, are great for learning the basics of data structures, but you'll find that if you pursue a career in CS you'll mostly only use languages like that for one-off scripts or for automating backend tasks. Once you get a good handle on the rudimentary basics of procedural programming, it's important to pick up OOP skills as quickly as possible. This will save you from the trap of always falling back on a procedural mindset, which can be a huge detriment in the real world.

In the enterprise world, the most marketable skill at the moment is Java, like it or not. Oracle has plenty of good tutorials on their own site, but if you've got a few bucks to spare, the Head First book is an amazing introduction to both the language, and OOP in general:

Hmm that's a hard one.

Not Java specific, but more than anything I'd tell them that they should just try to code as much as possible and work on a variety of different projects rather than just reading. Practice, practice, practice. Make use of resources like StackOverflow when you get stuck, and get good at Googling your problems/figuring out the right way to phrase a query, etc. Learn from your mistakes and try to understand things on a deeper level conceptually, etc. A lot of this is common sense but it makes a big difference. There's way too many people I know who seem to have a serious aversion to this for no reason and it holds them back big time. Even just reading the compiler errors - a lot of people for whatever reason just seem to switch off and assume it's unintelligible when really it's usually telling you in pretty certain terms what's wrong with your program...

If they don't have any previous programming experience I probably would recommend Python over Java.

In terms of Java-specific stuff I mostly learned from the Java docs and through trainers at my previous work place. I also used this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459085575&sr=8-1&keywords=java+head+first

Honestly though if you don't have access to any kind of training I'd probably sign up for the codeacademy course. I haven't used that specific course but in general it's just way easier to learn when it's interactive, rather than sitting down and going through a book chapter by chapter. I did that for C++ and it was really boring and took at least 3 times as long as it would've done if I had some kind of interactive course. I think books are good for reenforcing concepts, or getting a more exhaustive understanding of concepts you already have, but usually when it comes to retaining information I need to actually be able to use said concept in some practical context to remember it and appreciate it. I'm not sure if I'm making sense.

Compiler wise I'd just use the most up-to-date runtime environment from Oracle... I'm guessing you mean IDE? I use Eclipse but for beginners IntelliJ or netbeans might be better. Or even just a standard text-editor at first and compiling through the command-line. Any good tutorial would cover all of this.

Really none of this actually matters. It helps, but the big thing is just sitting down and coding and learning through experience. Any online tutorial in the first few pages of a google search result will do if you stick to it and try to create your own side-projects.

to further the conversation on the forum and offer some assistance to everyone out there.

• Java is indeed a primary component of Android Studio along with XML for formatting and defining actions.
  
  
• Android is unique from java in that you must declare every action you are going to take in the XML file before it can be recognized/run.
  
  
• Java may be a primary language however C and C+ can be used as well (there may be more however this is information learned on passing not actively sought out)
  
  If you do have a beginner textbooks worth of knowledge on Java then I would recommend starting with Android Application Fundamentals
  and familiarize yourself with the content or use this as a reference.
  
  if you are new to programming and you want to get started with learning Java then I would recommend (again) Head First: Java 2nd edition, this book is very good if you want a k-12 approach in that it isn't word heavy and it makes you find the solution more often than not.
  if you do love word heavy content and love taking notes then I would recommend: Core Java Volume I--Fundamentals (9th Edition)
  
  free pdf versions of both books can be found so please do not limit yourself.
  
  Thank you for taking the time to read and please Never stop moving forward.
  
  edit:spellcheck and link added

So, architecture can be hard without things to architect, it's very true, and expectations of a junior candidate are going to be lower here, since a lot of junior work is implementing or maintaining things other people have designed and architected. That said, work on finding things to build that have some sort of practical use, whether it is running a site for some club or organization you're a part of, setting up a media streaming system at home, or building some home automation. Then—the important part—be able to discuss intelligently why you made the decisions you did, e.g., "why did you use Apache instead of nginx?" or "why did you use a pair of 1TB hard drives in raid 1 instead of a home NAS?"

An understanding of operational principles also really only comes with actually operating things, and, as a junior, hiring managers are usually going to be mostly concerned with whether you understand that certain concepts are important, rather than whether you can implement them adequately. Some examples of the sort of questions you should be able to talk about confidently, even as a junior:

• Do you understand the basic concepts of automation and config management and why they are important?
  
• Why might someone choose to run something on-prem vs in a cloud provider?
  
• Why might someone run something on bare metal vs virtualized?
  
• What benefits or concerns would someone need to consider when deciding whether to use containers to deploy something?
  
• What are some things to consider when deciding what operating system to deploy something on?
  
• Why is the principle of least privilege important?
  
• Why is monitoring important? How do you decide what to monitor? How do you decide what should page someone vs send an email or create a ticket?
  
• Why are ticketing systems important?
  
• How do you decide what to document and at what level?
  
• What do you need to consider when setting up logging for a system, group of systems, or an application?
  
• What do you need to consider when setting up backups for a system or application?
  
• Why is HA important? What are some methods of implementing it? Why might you choose one over another?
  
• What considerations do you need to take when planning for business continuity/disaster recovery?
  
  Team play and project work, however, are not tech-specific, and you certainly already have experiences of some sort in these areas. Anything where you had to work with a group of people over a period of time is relevant experience you can learn from. It doesn't really matter whether you're talking about a school project, helping your aunt build a deck, or defeating the evil lich lord with your motley band of D&D characters. What's important is whether you can talk about good and bad experiences working with other people to accomplish a long-term task that involved planning and coordination, along with what you learned from the experiences.
  
  For example, while interviewing for my current job, I talked about getting fired from an on-campus job at college for flat-out telling my boss in front of my coworkers that I wouldn't do a particular task. At first blush, you'd think that would immediately get me rejected, but I explained
  
  
• how I felt I was justified in pushing back against doing that task
  
• how we ended up working things out for the benefit of everyone involved
  
• how the incident arose from keeping silent about issues I had with the way things were operating until something pushed me over the edge and I reacted emotionally, and how I learned from the experience to bring up issues like that earlier and in a more appropriate time and place.
  
  That example and the job it relates have nothing to do with tech, but it's still an example of how team play is important.
  
  You should check out The Practice of System and Network Administration; it discusses a lot of concepts in a general manner and should help provide a basis for talking and learning about them competently.

From your post history I can see that you are in the general Portland, OR area. I did exactly what you are attempting to do, and here are my recommendations.

1. Being 27 I'm assuming that you have some level of technical knowledge / experience. Go get an entry level help desk / call center job. In my local area, you can get a job working for the local cable company for the Tier 1 internet support center for $11/hr. Work there for 6 months to a year. If you can't find somewhere like that on your own, then engage with local staffing firms Best Portland Staffing Firms. You can also use Indeed to search for jobs in the area.
   
   
2. Purchase a book on Network+ Certification and spend a good 6 months reading & studying while you are working. Don't get the A+ certification, its practically worthless in today's IT world.
   
   
3. After you have 12 months of experience and a Network+ Certification under your belt, you can find a better position that pays better, and affords you more opportunities. Don't be afraid of contract positions, contract-to-hire. I am now a hiring manager, and I started at my current company contract-to-hire. Its a method to prove out those that are unseasoned.
   
   
4. If you do decided that you want to go back to school, don't go to a 4 year school. Find a local community college that has a solid 2 year Development / Networking program that you can attend night school while you are working. I have 10 people that report to me on 2 different InfoSec teams, and I don't take much stock in a degree. Something like Portland Community College and their Computer Information Systems program. If you can find a school that participates in Cisco's Networking Academy, and want to become a Network Administrator, their 2 year program is very rigorous, but very good. You will come out able to pass the CCNA exam.
   
   
5. Utilize Lynda.com it is a very cheap solution to providing endless learning opportunities in many different spaces for only $35/month.
   
   
6. You can do this. Its not too late. I started down my IT career path at 28 years old, married, with 4 kids in 2008 making $8/hr at a help desk on Campus. I didn't have a degree when I started at my current company in 2012 making $54K, and I now make double that amount and have been promoted 3 times. Take it one step at a time.
   
   Remember this isn't a competition with anyone but yourself!
   
   

The knowledge you get from the CCENT is really great. I would recommend using Packet Tracer. It's a beginner network simulator that allows you to practice configuring Cisco routers and switches from the Cisco IOS command line. You can get it for free by taking an hour long Cisco 101 course.

Additionally, Wendell Odom's CCENT book is awesome! He teaches the material in a really in-depth way, and it helps you understand the theory. It took me about a month of studying after taking the Cisco Networking Academy classes to be ready, so you would probably be ready after 4-6 months of studying.

Here's a link to Packet Tracer and the Wendell Odom book:
https://www.netacad.com/about-networking-academy/packet-tracer/

https://www.amazon.com/CCENT-ICND1-100-105-Official-Guide/dp/1587205807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1498097630&sr=8-1&keywords=ccent

Good Luck!

Well I bought this book first: https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Get-Certified-Ahead/dp/1939136059/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=security+%2B&qid=1573832314&sr=8-4

I recommend it. He does an awesome job explaining everything. I read this from front to back.

Then switched to Professor Messor videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG49S3nxzAnnVhoAaL4B6aMFDQ8_gdxAy

Watched all of them beginning to end. Good way to solidify your foundation of what you learned from the book.

Then do some practice tests to find out what you need to work on. I found some practice tests from Cisco on youtube. It was like 600 questions but worth it.

Anyways, I hope this helps. Good luck I'm sure you will do great!

First step, learn Java well enough to be comfortable reading and writing it. You can check out the Java Tutorials to get started. Another good resource is Head First java. I'd recommend getting your head around Object Oriented Programming and writing some simple programs in plain Java before you dive into Android.

Next, check out the Android Documentation as it's going to become your best friend. They have loads of tutorials and sample code to help get you started. I also found The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development and Professional Android Application Development really helpful and would definetly recommend reading a book on Android dev as it will make things a lot easier when debugging/coding. Android apps are quite different then desktop apps so it's worth understanding how they work and the ideas behind Android's design.

Finally, code up your app and launch it!

You don't need school to learn how to do that. It's true for most things in life but it is even easier with computer science.

Want to learn C ? No school will ever teach it better than the book The C Programming Language (also called K&R) by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.
Want to learn C++ ? You should start with C or C# or Java and then go for Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup.
Want to learn Python ? Go to python.org and pick a tutorial.
Want to learn Javascript ? Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke.
Want to learn HTML5 ? Maybe have a look at diveintohtml5.info or W3Schools
Want to learn Java ? The Java Programming Language by Ken Arnold or Head First Java by Kathy Sierra.

You need two things, time and will. You'd be surprise how easy it is to learn all those things if you like it and if you have a dream project.

edit: Woh, thanks for the gold. :D

If you study for it seriously, it's very doable. I'd also suggest CBT nuggets (though it is a bit on the expensive side, but Jeremy Cioara is an excellent teacher). Also, I consulted Todd Lammle (http://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Routing-Switching-Study-Guide/dp/1118749618) book for my CCNA and I personally think it's the best book that I came across for the exam. You should consult a few books and see which one works best for you. I'd highly suggest GNS3 or packet trace for lab-experience at CCNA level. Good luck with your plans.

As you can imagine everyone's extremely circumspect about how to study for the test due to the NDAs: advice about what to study can be viewed as tantamount to saying "X, Y, Z is on the test."

Since you have RH 7.2 coming in your shop (congrats!) the best advice comes RedHat themselves: RHCE exam candidates should consult the RHCSA exam objectives and be capable of RHCSA-level tasks, as some of these skills may be required in order to meet RHCE exam objectives.

Having said that Jang's guides get pretty good reviews (Amazon.com). They're comprehensive although as always with a book this size there are inevitably errata. I've never used them but my several of my employees have and liked (CertDepot). Since you have this much time between now and the exam I'd dig deep into the (exam objectives) and make sure you can do those in your sleep.

Exam objectives aside all the shiny new stuff in 7.2 like systemd, networking and selinux are where you'll probably find the biggest gaps in your knowledge as 7.2 rolls out in your site. As a fellow old-schooler I just work under the assumption I'm going to get paged out of bed at 3 AM, I'll be shivering in the datacenter standing at the console of a downed production system and my cellphone can't get a signal, so all I have is what I remember and if I'm lucky the man pages.


Or if that seems unrealistic pretend you're going for a job interview at RedHat and that you must be able to describe commands and procedures to accomplish your job without referring to any external sites like Google or stack overflow.

Let me start by telling you that InfoSec jobs are in-demand now more than ever and that's not likely to change as more and more of the world are starting to use computers, computers continue advancing, etc. So, barring any sort of impending dark ages and assuming you're putting enough effort into your education and continuing education, you should be able to work your way up without too much trouble. Focus on getting your foot in the door and be professional.

 

Now then, I'm currently an Information Security Analyst in the US, so this information may be completely irrelevant to you out there in NZ. I initially only graduated with an Associate's (2-year) in Information Security & Computer Forensics. I managed to get my job before I had even graduated as I worked hard in school (a stressful amount, really) and knew how to conduct myself in a professional manner. They actually paid for my certifications, and a lot of companies out there will as well. Here's the tiered structure we followed - all InfoSec related certifications:

 

Within the first 6 months, we are sent to training to obtain our CompTIA Security+ certification. This is roughly a 1-hour, multiple choice test and you need at least an 80% to pass. I would recommend any of these three books to study from:

This is the book that my company had provided me to study from

This is the book my friend had given me. Both her and I studied from this and passed successfully

This is the book we are currently learning from in my Bachelor's program

Take your pick, they'll all achieve the same essentials, mostly. I am awful at studying and mainly just crammed the few topics I wasn't sure about in the night/morning before my test and passed with an 86%.

 

Next, we're sent to get our GSEC, which is the GIAC Security Essentials Certification. The Security+ focuses on several main topics and gets in-depth with the information, whereas GSEC covers a wide span of topics but doesn't get very in-depth. This test takes about 5 hours to complete also, compared to the 45 minutes that it took to take the Security+. It's important to note that the GSEC, while 5 hours long, is open-book. My company sent me to a training class that provided 6 different books to cover any topic on the GSEC, however you also need an index. The books themselves don't have a table-of-contents, so you need to make an index yourself that covers just about every topic on every page. In my case, a coworker sent me his that he had used, and it turns out it was out of date so not a single page was correct. Much to my own surprise, I passed with an 82% (the minimum passing score is 74%) so while the index/books are important - they're not completely necessary as long as you paid attention in your classes. It should also be noted that I did not actually study for this. Most of it was just common-sense stuff like "Which of the following does an Intrusion Prevention Device do?" and knowledge that I had obtained from school/work.

 

After GSEC is the GCIH, or, GIAC Certified Incident Handler. I haven't taken this yet, nor the next one, so I can't speak to their difficulty or process, but I've been told by other analysts it's roughly the same as GSEC, just different information and more hands-on like capture the flag runs.

 

Finally, after GCIH, we are sent to get our GCIA, or, GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst. Same with GCIH, I have not been sent to obtain this cert just yet, but I can only imagine it's somewhat similar to the last 2 as they follow GIAC's tiered structure.

 

So TLDR - as a current InfoSec Analyst - the recommended certs are Security+, GSEC, GCIH, and GCIA. There are many more certs out there, though, these are just the ones my company values currently.

 

Good luck!

Since you are looking into entry level tech support your best bet is to look into the CompTIA certifications. Start with A+ certification ( https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-220-901-220-902-Exam-Cram/dp/0789756315/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1501947087&sr=8-2&keywords=a%2B+exam+cram ) . Even though you might be able to fix 99% of problems on your own with Google's assistance it might be hard to sell that to employers at interviews, especially if you don't have anything 'concrete' to back it up with (previous work experience, certifications, schooling for IT), which is why I recommend looking into that route. Also keep in mind Linux is a very very small % of the market share out there and is more of a niche market. Sure, you can get Linux certifications but I don't think it will help you at this current stage in your career getting into IT, so focus on the stuff that actually applies to entry level tech support (A+ certification). Feel free to private message with any more questions. Good luck!

It may not be a source as simple as just a link, but I have been studying for the CompTIA A+ exam and they go over a lot of this stuff pretty well. If you get any of the textbooks or look up some of the online study guides, they will have a decent amount of information on these topics.

This is the textbook I have been reading recently. It has a ton of information about the different technologies and standards involved in each component, and can really make those specifications you see on your hardware make sense.

I have been really happy with my new-found ability to look up something complex, like a motherboard, and understand the advantages and disadvantages almost immediately.

Professor Messer also has a popular guide for the A+ in a pdf format, but I have not used it and cannot vouch for it being what you seek.

Good luck!

This book is a very good self study resource for Red Hat's entry level sys admin certifications. Covers RHCSA stuff (entry level), and RHCE (intermediate level). Start with the RHCSA items, it will run you through basics of setting up FTP, HTTP, DNS, Samba, etc. servers.

Also, there are efforts like this one that crowdsources preperation material for those above certifications as well.

But like others have suggested, install RHEL/CentOS in a VM, and just play with it. Familiarize yourself with common commands, services, tasks, installing software (yum), and google linux forums for answers.

Congrats! Welcome to linux administration, and best of luck.

Just passed Sec+ last week. I’m military so it doesn’t do me much good in a civilian sector (at the moment,) but I know people that get it and are able to get well-paying jobs right off the bat. It’s definitely difficult, but easily passable. If you’re interested, I recommend the Darril Gibson book. Took a nine day course studying that, and passed with almost no professional IT experience.


Best of luck to you and I highly recommend getting more certs!

My advice would be to not take a class for CCNA. Just go ahead and self study (I pretty much did this up to CCIE level). If you are a software developer, you will not have any issue.

Its great to have a good handle on the top vendors like Cisco, Juniper Arista. However, you can stand out by focusing more on vendor neutral stuff once you have the basics under your belt. I see the demand right now for network engineers with software / automation skills to be absolutely huge - it can take you ANYWHERE you want to go.

Some recommended learning resources -

Internetwork Expert - check out their all access pass. Its a fixed monthly fee and you will get access to all of their training videos. The quality is second to none and the owner / instructors are very helpful - even by direct email.

CCNA Study Guide - for a basic grounding, check this out and go ahead sit the exam once you have completed it and watched some training videos - even if you don't feel like you are ready, you will gain alot of knowledge / insight.

Juniper Fast Track Certification Program - you could use this to look at going after the JNCIA. The material here mainly focuses on people with a "CCNA" level knowledge and helps them to transition and apply the same skills to Juniper devices. Its very easy once you've completed the CCNA.

In terms of hands on time on equipment, if you really want you could buy a lab but I would recommend trying out something like GNS3 to get started with.

If you have any questions on resources or how to attack this, feel free to PM me.

Hope that helps some how.

If you're completely new, you'll still need some type of guide or reference, but you can definitely use BlueJ to run your code offline. It's a lot more basic to use, and I always would recommend it to a beginner. Once you get the hang of it, you can move onto a more feature rich program like https://eclipse.org/.

As for guides, you could try and find a PDF online somewhere or save tutorial pages from websites for offline use to refer back to. You could also probably pick up a Java book of some sort, or ebook even.

This is an excellent beginners book:

https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/

Yeah man, no problem.

Before I find some specific books, I wanna mention one series that you've definitely heard of: Blank for Dummies. From my experience, if you want to start from no knowledge and work up to an intermediate level of understanding, For Dummies books are great. A lot of experts beg to differ.

But, to be frank, people who are experts in their field are just that: experts in their field. I have friends who are excellent in their fields, but they are terrible teachers. They expect people to pick things up as quicky as they did. We're not all wired that way, and For Dummies books get that.

So, for my first two recommendations, here ya go:

Networking for Dummies

Building Your Own PC for Dummies

Both of those are less than 20 bucks on Amazon, and I'm sure you can find them at a library.

Now, if you really want to get into networking, and you want to get in to the IT field, you should read the A+ and Network+ certification books from Comptia. These will be harder to find in a library, but there will probably be some older editions lying around somewhere. If you know someone who works in the field, they probably have a copy, or can get you a copy, for free or cheap.

These books are more expensive, and more difficult, but they are peerless if you want to jumpstart a career in IT. I'm not going to claim that getting an A+ and/or a Network+ (or a Security+) certification is going to guarantee you a job. However it will definitely help you get your foot in the door.

Other books that you'll want to eventually check out if you want to check out things from O'Reilly. Most of their books are not meant for beginners, but they are the quintessential reference books in the IT field, including computer science, networking, and security. To give you an idea of just how many books they have, check out this picture of the programming section at the Noisebridge Hackerspace in San Francisco.

That band of colorful books in the middle? Those are (some of) the programming books they have available. They have just as many on every topic of IT. Here's their networking section. 19 pages. Of just networking books.

I hope that gives you a good idea of where to start.

Cybrary has solid training - I definitely would recommend them. I don't know that it alone will be enough to pass the exam but it certainly is a good start. The Darryl Gibson book seems to have pretty positive feedback so you may want to pick that one up as well. Here is an Amazon link for it: https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Get-Certified-Ahead/dp/1939136059/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1939136059&pd_rd_r=W762ZND5VVXXV57WFX7R&pd_rd_w=mXr4x&pd_rd_wg=90N8D&psc=1&refRID=W762ZND5VVXXV57WFX7R

Second the site. The android documentation is fantastic and will get you right up to speed.

I've been doing some Android development since around April. I have experience with C, a little Java, assembly, and python and started my Android learning with the Head First Java/Design Patterns books.
http://www.amazon.ca/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208

There a little childish in some respects because of the games/exercises, but I found the material and coverage was quite good.

I found knowing about threads and the protection of data through mutexes and semaphores was really helpful to understand the Android UI model.

Good luck. Have Fun.

Sounds like you already know what you want to do! I'm on the Microsoft side of the house, love scripting, and am fortunate enough to spend the majority of my day working in PowerShell.

Definitely check out The Practice of System and Network Administration if you haven't already, it lays a great foundation for the areas in IT.

If you go the Linux / scripting route, read up on and spend more time with shell scripting and Python (perhaps Ruby if you get into config mgmt). If you go the Windows route, read up and spend more time on PowerShell. Either way, being able to code and automate will be very important in our field, it sounds like you are on the right track.

Cheers!

Keep your head up!

I failed the CISSP, and like you, had to do some soul searching on why I failed. It turns out, it had nothing to do with how smart I was, or how much I studied, but it was how I was studying that made the difference.

Please see this video detailing how I studied for and passed the CISSP on my second try and 4 AWS exams after that using the same exact method:

https://youtu.be/wod92WIn92E

​

The materials I used to pass the SAA:

1. The Official AWS SAA Study Guide. It was written by the people who write for the exam and work for AWS
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Solutions-Architect-Official-Study/dp/1119138558/ref=sr_1_3?crid=31WZJJVGJE1SS&keywords=aws+certified+solutions+architect+official+study+guide&qid=1570917672&sprefix=aws+crti%2Caps%2C256&sr=8-3#customerReviews
   
   
2. The testing engine at Whizlabs.com . You can put the testing engine into audit mode where after you answer each question, it will tell you the correct answer(s) with citations from AWS on why those answers are correct and why the ones that aren't are incorrect. I start with doing 5 questions, then after getting 70% or higher with 5, move onto 10 questions after starting over again. Then after scoring 70% on 10 questions, move onto 20 questions and so on until I get the whole exam done and I know the correct answers and why they are correct.
   
   Also, don't sit for the exam until you feel comfortable enough to take it, but if you follow the guidelines in the first link above, it has helped myself pass as well as other people I've worked with pass AWS exams and the CISSP.
   
   Keep your head up, and don't let this exam beat you. Please feel free to reach out should you have any questions.
   
   Hope this helps!
   
   My background: Passed CSAA, CDA, SysOps, Cloud Practitioner and CISSP

Headfirst Java is an excellent book that would teach you the basics of what OOP is, how, and why they work. They are iOS articles out there like Raywenderlich that would teach you the OOP concepts but honestly; I believe this book would teach you in a way you would want to learn them.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0596009208/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501095615&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=head+first+java&dpPl=1&dpID=51Gsycdh-TL&ref=plSrch

Also as for Algorithms the best algorithm course I have ever taken was from Coursera, Algorithms part 1. With the headfirst Java book, you should proceed with this course nicely. Cracking the code interview book as well would be great after learning the algorithms/data structures fundamentals.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1

The CCNA curriculum is a great way to get a solid networking foundation. Many will recommend the Network+, but I certainly think the CCNA is a better certification track. I recently went through Todd Lammle's CCNA Study Guide in less than two months and passed the CCNA Composite.

http://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Routing-Switching-Study-Guide/dp/1118749618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413474786&sr=8-1&keywords=ccna+study+guide

The great thing about this book is you can opt to go the ICND1 and ICND2 route, or just go for the composite exam. It's up to you.

GNS3 is excellent for practicing in a lab environment if you do not have your own equipment.

Andrew Crouthamel has a good series on youtube for videos.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQZc6wrc__wo9oYOqvi9N_Q

They are a little dry, but free.

Install Gns3 (with some IOS images if you can get some) or packet tracer you can find a copy here http://getintopc.com/softwares/network/cisco-packet-tracer-6-1-free-download/.

There are some practice labs here http://www.packettracernetwork.com/labs/packettracerlabs.html.

You can get Todd Lamel book for self study as well.
http://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Routing-Switching-Study-Guide/dp/1118749618/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Hope this is helpful. Best of luck.

I am a wizard...er, I was. Literally had no life while studying/working.

The A+ was using this book though the current version when i was studying for it. Studied one chapter and took notes each day. On the weekend before the exam, reviewed the notes. Took the exam and passed. Read the second half of it and booked for the second exam, studied in the same manner.

Network+ I was already versed in the work through my job. Used this book and I didn't take notes on it at first. Read through it a second time (cover to cover both times, but over the course of a month). Felt fairly confident, but went through and really memorized port numbers (not as necessary as you would think), practiced IPv4 addressing, how to convert hex to decimal, and memorized the OSI model both ways. Took the exam and passed it.

Security+ IMO is easier than Net+. You already have some overlapping information. It's more terminology and what does what than port numbers like Net+ was. You will get questions like, X is not working on this network and you notice the following ports being blocked. Which one needs to be enabled to get X to work (or be blocked). My job offered something called CBT Nuggets which I watched on lunch breaks for the Security+ exam, and I read this book on my Kindle (which worked surprisingly well).

Flame suit on - I know Professor Messer gets a lot of praise, and I'm sure his videos are good. I dabbled in them however found inconsistencies or completely the opposite sometimes in his videos from what I found in books (not always). I didn't want to confuse myself, so I stopped using his videos. For all I know though, he's stating the correct thing, and the books are wrong. I just didn't want to get caught up on which one is correct. This was sometime ago, and nothing comes to mind now.

I've heard good things about these two:

• http://www.amazon.com/Java-Program-Early-Objects-10th/dp/0133807800/
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/
  
  My first Java book was:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Java-Programming-Language-4th/dp/0321349806/
  
  Although I enjoyed it a lot it's extremely weak on exercises (besides teaching java 1.5 (iirc)).
  
  The java tutorials are quite good, but lack on the exercises area, which is sort of crucial to learning how to program.
  
  
• https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/
  
  It's good too keep those tutorials in mind though because they're great as a first read on a particular piece of the java language and/or library.
  
  I think the best mix of learning java and learning how to program among these books is in the one by Paul and Harvey Deitel.
  
  Another good one on Java is the "Core Java" two volumes pack:
  
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Core-Java-I--Fundamentals-10th/dp/0134177304/
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Core-Java-II--Advanced-Features-10th/dp/0134177290/
  
  Although they're also weak on exercises, I remember the second volume being filled with examples.
  
  By the way, don't get discouraged by the sizes of those books. They're big not because they're difficult, but because there are lots of things to talk about. Generally speaking, all these books are mostly easy.

congrats and good luck on security plus. I recently passed security + and I think the best study guide I used was the Darril Gibson book (http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Certified-Ahead-SY0-401/dp/1939136024) wish I would have thought of your flashcards before I think it would have helped quite a bit -- thanks for that.

I think you need to keep an extremely open dialog with the COO. She's your boss. But she's likely hoping you become a trusted adviser rather than someone who needs to be managed.

1. You need to let her know that your feeling uncomfortable with the new role and responsibilities, and let her know you have a plan to move forward.
   
   Don't go in there helpless. But don't hide your deficiencies either. If you want to grow, she will help you do it. But you need to be self-reflecting and have ideas as to how to move forward.
   
   The plan itself will come in the next suggestions.
   
   
2. Try to piece together as many past projects as you can remember. Recall the goals you were trying to achieve, the general timeline, and any roadblocks along the way.
   
   Reflect on what was successful, and what could have gone better. Get a feel for the general process you defined. Could you have communicated the goals in a more organized fashion? Could you have defined milestones to help set management expectations? Should you have explicitly mentioned certain things weren't goals? What alternate plans where there, why were they rules out, and did management know about them? Were they properly budgeted? Was there adequate testing? Was it prioritized properly?
   
   Do this for every singly project you can remember, then focus on identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each rollout. The strengths are what you were good at doing. The weaknesses were what you were bad at.
   
   It could be as simple as "You know, looking back at this rollout, it all feels like one big step to me. I'm having trouble breaking them apart into steps, so it's hard to know when one piece of the project is done." You also need to identify why it's a problem and could get in the way of the project.
   
   Look for patterns, and lay them bare. She'll be aware of some things and not on others. But you're demonstrating a clear willingness to grow, and that your solutions aren't just grasping at straws.
   
   
3. Research training options.
   
   When you assess training options, you need to realize what you actually need. Do you need a class on project management, where you can ask an expert questions, or should you focus on ITIL standards, maybe you just need to start with a book, or maybe a book about modern it departments, or just a professional community.
   
   Your project successes and sore spots, as well as your own comfort level will answer this question.
   
   
4. You asked about tools and tips here. That's important, but if you don't know what problems you're trying to solve, you can't choose an effective tool.
   
   For any suggestion here, make sure you can justify its efficacy. How will the tool solve something that went wrong with a project?
   
   Maybe the tool isn't a program, but a process . . . A process that you're technically building up by reflecting on project results and starting the dialogue.
   
   
5. Define your role. What do you perceive your role to be now? What do they perceive your role to be now? What is the immediate goal for your role? What do they expect of you in 5 years? Where do you expect to be in 5 years?
   
   They might want you to stop break/fix entirely. You won't be getting an assistant, but you'll be put in charge of someone with their own role, goals, and projects. THEY handle break/fix, rolling out an update, deploying a project.
   
   So when a rollout moves past configuration and basic veirfication, they're role is to test it. Then give it to the people you direct. Then give it to everyone. They're not assisting you, they're following their own objectives within the parameters of their job description.
   
   Maybe they see you as becoming a CIO type in 5 years: the budget, vision for the company, etc. will fall on your shoulders. You'll have a team of people under you doing technical work, while you handle technology from the business perspective. And maybe that's not what you want.
   
   You might want to stay technical and specialize. You'll need project management skills as a Sr. admin or a manager, so your short term goals align. And they're not big enough for a CIO now anyway, so there's no harm.
   
   But your building the expectation that, once you grow large enough, there WILL be someone over you. Because that's not what you want.
   
   ------------------------------
   
   It's all about being comfortable, open, and trying to improve. Right now, you're deep into the learning phase. Own it. Everyone will respect you for it.

If you are looking for general advice, instead of domain specific (ie. Windows, Unix, networks...), this book should give you plenty of information and ideas for further reading. Very practical and sane approach. ITIL materials might be also useful, but that's much heavier reading, and rather, um, self-centered.

Keeping a blog with things that you've discovered/struggled with/hacked up together is rather useful - both for you, and for community at large. I actually do this both at work, writing about things specific to our infrastructure, and on the outside, when I find something interesting. It's easy to fall into trivial topics area though.

Last but not least: respect for picking sysadmin job despite having strong developer background. We need this kind of people :) You might also want to read around on DevOps, although take it with a grain of salt.

Good luck!

Personal recommendation, don't shoot for certifications with only Messer's videos and quick notes/questions. You might be able to pass the exam like that but more than likely you're going to be under prepared. Especially important for Network+ and Security+, as if something goes wrong it can cost a lot of money to the company. The in depth books are boring and will take a while, but it will teach you a lot more than studying the questions will.


Personally, when i study I use the 2-2-2 method. 2 Books, 2 Supplemental sources (Videos, tutorials, labs), and 2 Practice tests. Two books to make sure that if one author didn't cover a subject in detail well enough, or if I don't understand them, the other one mostly likely will cover it well enough. The other 2 would be other sources to learn from. I would watch videos on Wardriving, networking centers, data centers, etc. to get an idea of how everything looks in a real world deployment. Network+ won't teach you what to really expect to see in a MDF/IDF. CBTNuggets gets recommended a lot, but I usually use pluralsight. And 2 Practice exams, which I have to constantly get over 80% on them.


Todd Lammle's Network+ book is amazing, highly recommended


Mike Meyer's Book is also a good read.


As far as Security+ goes...


Favorite Security+ Material I've read. Super in depth and organizes topics very well.


Better than nothing for Sec+. After reading this book I did not review it again until right before the exam. Barely touches on a lot of subjects and missed quite a bit compared to the other book.

In short...yes. But there are a few things I would change given the chance. As others have said, either get certified, MCSA, MCSE and/or Network+ / CCNA. Or get a 4 year degree. The 4 year degree is more of an HR filter than anything, but now that I'm older and have a family it's a lot harder for me to go back to school and complete it. Small companies or managed service providers are great for a short term to get your feet wet in the industry. This is a great book The practice of network and system administration It is not very technical and it is kind of dry but it gives a lot of really good insight with how business IT works, things to consider when working on a particular type of project. For example moving an office, there is a chapter on office moves and what to think about... Some say it's a lot of common sense stuff but I found it helpful early on in my career.

I found it to be one of the easier tests, just a lot of reading and memorizing their terminology.

Like its been said multiple times in this thread, its really not for you, its just to have it on your resume to catch the eye of Non-IT HR types and get you past the screening process.


I once had a director who claimed to have her ITIL. If she managed to pass it, you can. Trust me.


If you want to augment ITIL with practical knowledge, this book was mentioned a few days ago. I picked up a copy and read a few chapters. Really thorough, I think its probably one of the best resources I've read on the topic.

Ended up tweeting Thomas Limoncelli just to tell him how awesome he is. His sysadmin prowess is legit, the guy replied within minutes. Even at Google, the sysadmins are symbiotically hooked to their smartphone like the rest of us. lol

I assume this is for the Associate exam?

I actually found the study guide book incredibly helpful. It is not a deep dive into all of the services but it is a great overview for each service. I also found reviewing documentation on various services to be helpful.

I took two practice exams that came with the book. They weren't 100% accurate to the test but they do give you a very good idea of what the exam flow is. You won't find anything with 100% accurate exam questions. Therefore, study the domains, and get comfortable with the way the test flow goes.

Books are great to learn the foundations, but the real ah-ha moments come from implementing end to end projects. Pick something small (tic-tac-toe for example) and move your way up. You should take a look at the google android tutorial after you think you have a basic grasp of the language

You will probably struggle a lot, but thats how the best learning happens. Stack overflow will be your friend for most questions.

Intellij is the best IDE out there for java: here

As for books, I've heard good things about the head first series.

Geek Squad isn't IT. It's computer repair. It's better than nothing, but you would be better off doing something else.

Any way you can get a cheap sublease and stay on campus over the summer and try to work for the university? The time to get a job like that isn't the last week of the semester. It's probably in a couple of weeks.

Realistically you're probably like 19-20 so you can always do Geek Squad or a computer repair store, and it's way better than nothing, but you don't really get experience to IT operations. You're repairing home computers.

In the mean time, go buy this book and read it cover to cover. It actually tells you how to operate an IT department as opposed to people being overly focused on the specifics of the OS or software or hardware they're working with.

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668

I think you'll sound more intelligent during future interviews if you've read it.

Not sure what the difference is per say but I have this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/125958951X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517975927&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=a%2B&dpPl=1&dpID=51Vogw4seHL&ref=plSrch

I'm around 880 pages in of 1288 and I liked it pretty well it's just A LOT of material.

The disc questions are lame...they try to force you to buy stuff they are just sample stuff. The key to the disc however is that it includes a free copy of the entire book on PDF! I put the disc in and put the book on a flash drive to read at work during lunch. So it works out that I didn't buy a ebook version.

I would also suggest to go to udemy and buy his lectures they're for the 901 and 902...they should be $10 each and they complement the book perfectly....they like overview each chapter.

Once I finish the book I plan to rewatch the videos on udemy as a refresher as well as watch professor messer videos.

Hi, All of those things are an excellent start, but I think you need more. Do the free practice tests on the Exam Compass site (http://www.examcompass.com/comptia/a-plus-certification/free-a-plus-practice-tests). Some of their questions are VERY picky, but overall they're good prep. Do the tests on the Crucial Exams site, too (https://crucialexams.com/exams/comptia/a+/220-901/). See if your library has the new Mike Meyers book (http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X). Go through the questions at the end of each chapter. Use the CD that comes with the book as a source of more questions. Good luck to you!

Download and install CentOS. It's the built-from-source version of RedHat Enterprise Linux. They are identical for all intents and purposes. Almost every business that's running linux is running either Cent or RHEL.

Use it as your primary OS, but that's not going to get you the experience you need to be a sysadmin. Use the RHCE Book to learn how to set up an apache server & other sysadmin tasks. Seriously, read the book & do the labs, you'll learn a lot about linux. (If you've got the $800 to spare, you can take the certification exam but IMHO the certifications don't get you much.)

Once you've got that down, check out the BASH Programming guide on tldp for shell scripting, and then maybe MIT's Introduction To Computer Science and Programming - completely free online course.

That ought to be a pretty good start. Good Luck!

Absolutely! Anything to help out others!

I used lots of different sources. Below are what seemed to help me the most.

Kevin Wallace's Videos give the best explanations: https://www.kwtrain.com/

Laz Diaz's Udemy Course gives great packet tracer labs: https://www.udemy.com/cisco-ccna-200-125-the-complete-course/ (DO NOT pay full price for this course. There are discounts ALL THE TIME that are 90% or more off. I paid $10)

The best subnetting video available in my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs39FWDhzDs

Practice subnetting on https://subnettingpractice.com. Using Laz's chart method above I was able to do most of the questions here in under 30 seconds with practice. Helped a ton.

The Official Cisco Press CCENT book by Odem: https://www.amazon.com/Routing-Switching-200-125-Official-Library/dp/1587205815/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=ccna+book&qid=1554763617&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Disclaimer - I work for AWS, creating training (but these are my opinions).

Have you checked https://www.aws.training/ ? They have tons of free courses, including several specific to certifications.

If you're studying for the solutions architect associate, there's an official study guide that I found super useful when preparing https://www.amazon.com/Certified-Solutions-Architect-Official-Study/dp/1119138558/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=1UXOOLIOIPO3H&keywords=aws+certified+solutions+architect+official+study+guide&qid=1555292230&s=gateway&sprefix=certified+sol%2Caps%2C148&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1 (there are similar books for a couple other certs, but I haven't used them personally).

acloud.guru and LinuxAcademy.com (and another I can't remember) have courses available, they both looked good, not free.

Edx has a few courses, both from AWS and others https://www.edx.org/course?search_query=AWS they are free, or you can pay for access to exercises etc

Many of the official whitepapers are great https://aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/

I've only passed the 901 and putting the A+ on my resume as "in progress" (listed it literally as "Certifications: CompTIA A+ (in progress)") has already gotten me a possible job opportunity. Guy knew right away what that meant and he just asked when I planned on taking the 902.

So yeah it'll definitely help with getting hired.

As for studying, look over the exam objectives and see how much of it you know. If it's less than half, buy the Mike Meyers book and read it front to back. If it's more than half, buy the Pearson ExamCram book and read that instead. Watch Professor Messer's videos in either case and use CrucialExams, ExamCompass, Professor Messer, and ExamCram practice tests. ExamCram had questions most like the ones on the actual test, ExamCompass is the hardest, and Professor Messer's pop quiz collection is the one that gave me a score closest to what I actually got (846 on the real 901 exam, 847 adjusted from a percentage on Professor Messer's pop quiz collection).

Good luck.

ok so at school we worked with Big Java . Good book for beginners but it doesn't seem as comprehensive. Thinking in Java is the best book in my opinion, it is covers an insane amount of topics, but it is more of a challenge in case you have a short attention span (it tends to be more serious than the others, rendering it more boring in return).
Now in case you want something more playful Head First Java is a fun one, it uses pictures , and jokes and uses day to day examples in order to make things stick better to your brain. In case you find that kind of stuff better, than it is recommended, but it does cover less than both of the predecessors.

For later inquires, you can check out the books on this list

Most people start out on the CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) certification. It's important to keep in mind that this is just Cisco's version of networking, but it's good basic introduction.Todd Lammle's book (https://www.amazon.com/CCNA-Routing-Switching-Study-Guide/dp/1118749618) is a good place to start. Jeremy Ciora has a good video based program called CBT Nuggets to start in CCNA (https://www.cbtnuggets.com/certification-playlist/cisco/56440).

While you are doing that, download GNS3. (https://www.gns3.com/software). This will let you get hands on and start configuring stuff and let you actually program virtual routers and switches and actual follow along with your lessons. You'll have to get router images to use. Some are free, some have to be "found".

After you've gone through the lessons and done a lot of hands on, go to your local Pearson Vue test center (there is generally one on every base) and take your CCNA exam. It's like $250-300. All in, you'll probably be around $400.

If you're talking about memory corruption, you're looking for Smashing The Stack in 2010. However, most experts in application security and modern exploitation techniques recommend a more practical research-driven approach to learning about memory corruption mitigation techniques, so keep that in mind while reading this paper. As always, The Bible is relevant.

If you're talking about embedded device reverse engineering, you'll probably get the best answer from the /r/ReverseEngineering subreddit.

If you're talking about kernel bugs and kernel module bugs, I wish you luck. Bugs and vulnerabilities in these types of systems, usually require very obscure knowledge in very specific systems. Not for beginners or the faint of heart.

If you're talking about web bugs, you're looking for the OWASP Top 10. The web is mostly a giant joke, and widely uninteresting (this is an unpopular opinion on this subreddit).

I don't have a favourite but I tend to vacillate between the First Law trilogy, Robin Hobb's Six Duchies series and, of all things, The Dragonriders of Pern.

For nonfiction I love The practice of Network and Systems Administration - Thomas A. Limoncelli et al. It's a great guide on building what amounts to an effective, expandable and standards compliant IT department from the ground up. If you are a sysadmin this is How to do Your Job: The Book.

I'm 28.

EDIT: God I feel very plebian compared to a lot of people in this thread. It's rare I find a book I want to reread and if I do it tends to be a bubblegum book, I tend to read the point-making books once and leave them at that.

Trying to address all your questions.

1. There are many different ways to learn, it kind of depends on how deep you wanna go. If you're just wanting to get your feet wet, put Ubuntu or CentOS on a VM (something like virtualbox) and fuck around with it. Try to follow guides on setting up a Wordpress or deploying some other software.
   
   For more in-depth, study like you're planning on taking the RHCSA/RHCE exam. The objectives (RHCSA/RHCE) do a good job of covering the fundamentals. The book by Michael Jang is an excellent resource for this.
   
   If you want a "fuck you, eat linux" type approach, I'd recommend doing a Gentoo or Arch install. This won't teach you everything, but you will learn about some of the lower level parts of the OS that make it tick. I'd still recommend this (especially the Gentoo install) after you get the fundamentals down.
   
   
2. Windows and Linux tend to have their roles, but I find Linux tends to be more flexible. Linux does have equivalents to some of the things you list off, for example I have a domain setup in my house using FreeIPA, but in the enterprise world the Microsoft equivalents are still king. Linux is just a tool, so it really depends on what you're trying to do.
   
   
3. Generally by the time you get to a senior level you'll have specialized into some niche or another, at least in my experience. The fleet that I help to manage at work has some Windows components, but I only work on the Linux parts. It really depends.
   
   There are definitely some distros that are more "enterprise" than others. Generally I see mostly these deployed for enterprise use:
   
   

• RHEL(Red Hat Enterprise Linux)/CentOS
  
• Ubuntu (LTS versions)
  
• Debian
  
• SUSE (much rarer than the previously mentioned)
  
  Other distros like Mint, Fedora, Gentoo, Arch, etc. are only really used for desktops unless you really hate yourself or your admins. I have seen some Gentoo or Arch servers out in the wild before that customers have deployed.. but it's rare. Generally the big three (RHEL/CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian) are what are in demand skill-wise. There are some specialized distros used in enterprise that aren't as common (Scientific Linux, CoreOS, etc).
  
  CentOS is essentially RHEL with all the proprietary bits ripped out (some other small differences). I was able to study for my RHCE with CentOS without issue, they're that similar. You will run into trouble if you start going for some of the more specialized RHEL certs using CentOS.
  
  

4. Networking is a good skill to know. When I was first starting off I got my RHCE and CCNA since I didn't know which direction I wanted to specialize in. I ended up focusing on Linux, but my slightly-more-than-basic knowledge of networking has been a huge help. Hardware (other than the basics of switch vs managed switch vs router) isn't as important as networking concepts (how subnetting works, DNS fundamentals, VLANs and what they're used for, etc).
   
   I hope this helps!

I can help you out. I am a recent graduate just graduate this past spring from the Information and Computer Technology program with concentration in security. What you want to major in really depends on what you are most interested in. If you like coding and writing up programs then Computer Science is for you. If you don't like coding that much as want to focus on areas such as setting up firewalls, networking, where you subnet and assign computer's with ip addresses than yeah go with the Info. Comp. Tech. With the ICTN program it will prepare you for a industry certifications such as CCNA , Security +, CCNP, CCNA- security, RHCSA, RHCE. Do a google search on these certifications and look at the topics covered within the certifcation exams especially the CCNA. The cisco classes the prepare you for the CCNA are the hardest classes and are the washout classes. Where after people taking those that dropout of the program. If you seriously want to do the Info. Comp, Tech, then google the CCNA study guide and look at such content. Or click on this link
https://www.amazon.com/Routing-Switching-Complete-Study-Guide/dp/1119288282/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1495502742&sr=8-4&keywords=cisco+ccna

This is the type of stuff that you will be going over when you first start taking ICTN classes. The classes in the program are not hard as long as you put a good amount of work in. It really requires a lot of dedication and understanding. Because there are gonna be days you are going to be having problems in labs and its gonna force you to troubleshoot and think outside the box. The ccna certification itself is required if you wanna stay in the networking track. The certification itself is diffcult but do able. I myself do not have CCNA but have comptia Security+ .

Now i personally can't speak for computer science but if you are good at coding in such things such as Java, python or other programming languages then i would recommend Comp. Sci. Go to code academy google it gives you code lessons and see if you like that.

I can't really tell you want to do. But personally i would choose Info. Comp. Tech. over comp sci any day.

If you have any questions just PM

Honestly I'd just stick to one language to begin with and try to get as close to mastery with that language as possible. Learning two at once will slow you down as you get confused by the different semantics for each language.

I would probably recommend Java as you seem to have learned some already and it is a great starting language. Also most of what you learn through Java can be applied to most modern languages.

In terms of effective ways to learn, well that varies, I did it with the API and a lot of trial and error, some prefer a book. I hear a a lot of good things about the Head First books. Either way your goal should be to write as much code as possible, when you get proficient head over to sourceforge or codeplex and start contributing to an open source project.

Best of luck.

For that particular cert I took a job where I'd be leading an effort to spin up an entire linux environment from scratch including centralized config/package management, etc, and I had no formal training at the time so my employer put me through the 5 Day Rapid Track course you're probably looking at. It was pretty good, but I probably learned more from just following the course material on my own and working with my environment. I didn't actually take the exam until a couple months after the class.

This book is pretty universally revered as an excellent resource. I still break it out once in a while. Disclaimer: there might be a new one but I believe this is what I have.

https://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Guide/dp/0071765654

If you get through all of that and most importantly learn to effectively use the man pages and the existing in-OS resources (remember its a test on a live system so all commands are available including the documentation!), even if you come to a task in the exam that you've never done you will be familiar enough with "figuring shit out" to figure it out.

You should check out the official Java Tutorials.

I suddenly found myself developing Android apps as part of a career shift, and I didn't know Java very well. I went through those tutorials and felt pretty comfortable afterwards, I don't think it took me more than a few weeks. That said, I already had a background in software, so YMMV.

Regardless, they'd probably be a great way to get your feet wet before diving in during the semester.

If you're looking for a lighter intro, pick up a copy of Head First Java. Can't really go wrong with those books, they're always an easy read and lead by example; a good thing for someone who's learning for the first time.

> Right, because there's totally enough of these jobs for everyone.

There are plenty of jobs in IT, Medical and Accounting field to name a few.

And while saying all you do is push buttons is a generalization, none of the other jobs like making food, filling orders, cleaning tables and taking out the trash is very thought intensive. Hard work yes, do you need to know a whole lot not really.

Look if your working in the fast food industry you should be learning that the job sucks and you need to get an education in something other then fast food. The lesson you need to take away from that is this I don't want to do this anymore.

Take some of your money and buy a study guide for IT work, get a few certs and get a job on a help desk some where, then you can study more and take some more high level certs and move up to a better paying job.

The CompTIA a+ 901/902 Test is around $225. Here is the guide you'll need. It goes for about 30 dollars.

The Network + guide Here is 40 dollars. The test is around $300.


So for $600 dollars, while not exactly cheap if you work fast food, you can get a better paying job that you can work into a career if you want to. The jobs and opportunities are out there if you look over that chip you have on your shoulder.

Here are 181 jobs that pay anywhere from 45K to 100K a year. Civilian Contract work pays real good. You just have to have actual skills a clean record and be able to pass a drug test.

> I'd love to see these people that are against higher minimum wages work at McDonalds for 7-8 hours or more a day during lunch and dinner rushes. Having to deal with asshole customers all damn day.

If that were indeed my life, I'd have to sit back and rethink it.

I posted this in another thread but check it out, it might help.


Here is some information. Note that I still haven't taken my Net+ but this is the information that seems to be widely used:

All Hail Professor Messer:

http://www.professormesser.com/network-plus/n10-006/n10-006-course-index/

ExamCompass Practice Tests:

http://www.examcompass.com/comptia-network-plus-certification-practice-test-1-exam-n10-006

Crucial Exams Practice Tests:

https://crucialexams.com/

AioTestKing:

http://www.aiotestking.com/comptia/

Also, if you want hardcopy material look into Mike Meyer's series. I think it is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-Guide-Sixth-N10-006/dp/0071848223/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453823065&sr=8-1&keywords=mike+meyers+network+%2B

Good luck and happy studying!

If you plan to take the RHCSA exam (which is hands-on), aside from the courses at Linux Academy,
there are three popular resources to prepare for it:

(1) This book by Sander Van Vugt
(2) Video courses by Sander Van Vugt
(3) This book by Michael Jang

If you like to learn by reading books and doing their practice exercises, I recommend first reading the Vugt book and doing its easier exercises, and then going through the Jang book with its more challenging exercises.

The Vugt book has some typos, but I liked that it has many short easy chapters to learn the concepts.

Near the start of Michael Jang's book, he writes that he expects a reader to have an LPIC-1 level of knowledge/experience before going through his book. So I suggest you go through the LPIC-1 course at Linux Academy to get yourself up to that level (even if you don't take the LPIC-1 exam) before attempting the RHCSA-level material.

---------------------------------------------

P.S. If you do want to get an LPIC-1 certification, one approach is to pass the current pair of multiple-choice exams needed for a CompTIA Linux+ certification, called "Linux+ powered by LPI". Once you attain the Linux+ certification, you simply have CompTIA send your information to LPI, and LPI will grant you the LPIC-1 as well. It doesn't work the other way (getting a LPIC-1 will not get you a Linux+). This arrangement between CompTIA and LPI is in effect until September or October. Visit r/CompTIA to find posts by people who've taken those exams.

If you are looking toward application development(games or otherwise) I'd suggest looking at more practical beginning programming books, don't even worry too much about making a game yet or building complex algorithms. I've found the Head First series fairly good in the past, so maybe try out https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208

Once you get your head around basic application development a bit more, I would highly suggest learning design patterns and can fully recommend the Head First book on that topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns-Brain-Friendly/dp/0596007124
You can follow that up with the Game specific book on patterns, https://www.amazon.com/Game-Programming-Patterns-Robert-Nystrom/dp/0990582906

With all of that you should have enough to start asking more pointed questions and being able to Google up useful answers and tutorials that will get you on the road to building games.

Edit: That said, if you are looking at doing to extensive AI programming, specializing in engine design or other systems type development, start looking for books on the topic that interests you most. It's pretty easy to Google up book lists on these kinds of topics, and from there you can cross reference recommendations and should be able pick out ones that will help you get started.

I honestly have no idea between the differences of the two without looking it up. I took my Net+ back in 2007. The new test and objectives should be fun because it covers all the new things out there to include SCADA. Pretty good stuff.

From my experience doing certs, I really love the "All-In-One" series books. Mike Myers has been authoring the Network+ (and other books) for a while now and he has a book on Amazon for the n10-006 version. I would highly recommend getting that!

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-Guide-Sixth-N10-006/dp/0071848223

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Certification-Guide-220-901-220-902/dp/125958951X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501801312&sr=8-1&keywords=a%2B

Here is the Amazon book that I used. I found it to be pretty good overall, but the author is wordy and includes information that is not required to pass the A+.

https://www.youtube.com/user/professormesser

This Youtube channel has an A+ 901 and A+ 902 playlist, among many other useful videos. I watched the entirety of both playlists in addition to reading the Meyers book. I also bought the notes for these videos at:
http://www.professormesser.com/220-901-902-course-notes/

I found them to be very useful. They are straight to the point, and consist of bullet point style information.

My study plan was to first read the Meyer's book completely, watch the Messer videos, take practice exams on Examcompass.com, and then utilize Messer's notes and flashcards to memorize or reinforce whatever the practice exams showed that I was weak on. It seems like a lot, but it really wasn't that bad. I passed the 901 with a 759, and I am hoping to pass the 902 tomorrow. To pass the 901 you need a 675, and to pass the 902 you need a 700. These scores are out of 900.

For iOS devices, you're going to want to start here, this will get you familiarized with the NeXtStep family of jive turkeys, followed up with a more formal introduction to Objective-C. I'll be honest, having some working knowledge of C will never hurt you, so after you're done with that, take a peek at K&R.

If you're aiming for Android, you have a bit of a different education outlook, I'd recommend brushing up with Head First Java. When I started poking around with Android, I read Hello, Android most of it should be still pretty relevant. I'm not entirely sure if it has been updated as of late, I outgrew it rather quickly, and if you do too; pretty much anything and everything by Mark Murphy is relevant. Best of luck!

I don't think my test had any ip config whatsoever. Maybe one question about hosts on a network, but that's about it.

You can't study one specific topic for Sec+. Although it's one of the "easier" certs, it's still pretty rough. But then again, I only studied for about a month before I took it, and I only got an 800.

For studying material I would highly recommend Gibson's book.

That's the only book I used.

Edit: I also used a lot of online quizzes. I'm pretty sure Gibson has quizzes on his website that you have to pay for. The biggest mistake people make with online quizzes is memorizing the answers. You have to actually know and understand the shit that you're being tested on.

I'm in a similar situation as yourself, studying for A+ and onward from there. I've heard Micheal Meyers All-in-One Exam Guide (8th edition) is very good. I'm not nearly through it enough to give my opinion on it, but I have never heard someone speak poorly of it.

I'm also going through Professor Messer's A+ videos. You can buy them, or you can watch them all totally free right on his site. I think it's a very good resource, and again I've only heard good things. They're broken down very well, and easy to handle in small chunks.

Beyond that I'm just a noob myself and can't offer much else.

head over to /r/ccna and look around. ccent is a good entry exam and not too hard. grab the official cert guide from amazon. study, then test.

another option is a safaribooksonline subscription. you can sign up for a free trial and see if its worth it for you. ($40/month) it gives you access to hundreds upon thousands of books (including the cisco cert guide mentioned above) as well as the INE videos from kevin wallace. these combined with some initiative will get you through the exams.

best of luck!

IMO; The fastest IT career to get into is in Linux Administration. I don't know how your job scene is over there in the UK, but from my experience in the US it's pretty happening.

You can get started in under 3 months with under a grand and get a job making 50-60k starting.

Here's how:

1. Pick up this book;
   
   https://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Seventh/dp/0071841962/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523303112&sr=8-1&keywords=jang+linux
   
   
2. Do all of the exercises, labs, etc...
   
   
3. Go through each portion of each test on https://www.certdepot.net/
   
   
4. Make a drill setup for each major area. Perform each drill at least 5x a day till you have the commands in your muscle memory. Now, turn over your drill list and attempt the task from scratch. Repeat until you can confidently execute each task from memory. Read 5 man pages per day, minimum.
   
   
5. Go get your RHCSA. Cost to take the test is ~400 USD, dunno what the exchange info is like. After you pass your RHCSA, then take RHCSE.
   
   
6. Go get a job at a webhosting company or a data center.
   
   
7. Keep learning. Learn to write scripts in Bash. After Bash pick up Python. Decide if you want to pivot into the security field, or if you wanna go deeper into Sysadmin. If you want to do security look into Cybrary for general learning security stuff.
   
   
8. Once you have a grip grab your nuts and get your OSCP cert. This is big boy level shit. This is spending 16+ hours on a live lab pen test certification. This is one of the most respected certs in the industry. You get that bad boy and you are going to be getting 100k+ hiring offers off twitter and linkedin regularly.
   
   
   https://www.offensive-security.com/
   
   If you wanna stay an admin go down the architect route with Redhat.
   
   Knock knock Neo.

First, read our Wiki. It is very thorough and answers a lot of these common questions such as

day to day? The Practice of System and Network Administration
And the topical reference books listed below.

Books to help in shaping a sysadmin? The above &:
The Phoenix Project
Time Management for System Administrators


Topical Books I see mentioned often and have been very helpful to me:
Powershell in a month of lunches
Learn Python the hard way
Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
Windows Server 2016: Inside Out

Group Policy
AbsoluteBSD
FreeBSD mastery:ZFS
CCNA
RHCSA/RHCE
Pro Puppet
SSH Mastery

On my docket:
FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS

Michael W. Lucas and Thomas Limoncelli are very good sysadmin writers, you can't go wrong with a topic they have chosen to write about.

Most of the *nix stuff assumes a baseline knowledge of how to use a unix-based system. I learned as I went but did pick up an old copy of Unix Visual Quickstart Guide not too long ago at a used books sale, which seems like a good starting place for someone overwhelmed with sitting at a terminal and being productive.
I notice I don't have any Virtualization books, perhaps someone else can fill in good books. Most of my knowledge regarding virtualization and network storage has been a mix of official docs, video training, and poking at it. Seems innate but it isn't.

Start here:

http://www.professormesser.com/free-a-plus-training/free-a-plus/

This guy's uploaded great video guides on the entire A+ exam for free. I'm sure he has some literature if you learn better from a book. Also these books are pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/007179512X/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=1944687722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1118324056&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0NNPTGHSPZBPVBMZCYB9

Start here: Create a homelab. This will help with testing out multiple paths.

System Admin: Create a domain controller and VMs using Docker or virtualbox and start looking at Active Directory and Powershell.(Windows Server 2016 Trial)

Azure Cloud: Here you can test out learning Azure Cloud(for free). You can use your Homelab to test free alternatives like Proxmox or KVM(Linux Bare Metal Hypervisor)

Security+: Secure your cloud or local homelab. Also, look into getting a Security+. Even if you don't go into security, I believe a SEC+ is required for government IT jobs(This is what I've been told).

​

Most of those are free to try and only cost your time. Start there and see what calls out to you.

The official one is pretty good though, at least in content. I'd encourage you to power through. Other wise Head First Java is pretty well recommended.

Not all of these are in our core training/ required knowledge, or related to our day to day functions as a university A/V department, but They are all available to my team for knowledge building and professional development. Additionally , and our job ladder includes Infocomm certifications, so the library is a little biased towards infocomm resources at the moment.
Books I use are

• [Master Handbook of Acoustics](
  http://www.amazon.com/Master-Handbook-Acoustics-Alton-Everest/dp/0071603328)
  
• CTS exam guide
  
• sound reinforcement handbook
  
• a/v best practices
  
• Sound system engineering
  
• show networks and control systems
  
• television production handbook
  
• tcp/ip illustrated vols 1-3
  
• PMBOK
  
• network wiring
  
• entertainment electricity
  
• sys admin
  
  just ordered digital video and hd
  based on a recommendation in r/videoengineering
  
  infocomm's audio and visual systems design, essentials of the av industry, av best practices, AV installation hand book
  
  
  white papers/ online training from extron, JBL, Dalite, surgeX, bluejeanscable, and others. (out of the office and do not have the exact list and links with me
  
  
  
  
  

Well, first I'd like to say to definitely stick with your Computer Science course load. It will be a solid foundation.

There is a lot of practical stuff you can learn. I'm not sure on your skills so, I'd install a Linux distribution like Mint, or Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine and pick up a book like How Linux Works. Once you're comfortable enough with Linux, I'd install it on something like a Raspberry Pi and play around with some projects. There's plenty on the Internet about the Raspberry Pi and playing around with them is very educational.

For networking, check out a [Networking+ book] (http://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-All-In-One-Exam-Guide/dp/0071789227). You don't have to take the exam, but you will learn a decent amount about networking fundamentals from the book. You might also enjoy the videos on Stanford's on-line course, although the course is over.

I'm kind of rambling, but just find something you're interested in and go from there. Try to break it, fix it, find a project.

edit: updated version link for 'How Linux Works'.

Well, Android apps are written in Java, so it's probably a good idea to start with the base language itself. I don't think it's generally a good idea to jump into a specialized use of a language without any programming experience whatsoever.

The most suggested book for beginners learning Java is Head First Java, though there are plenty of great resources available for free online that can be found with minimal googling. The search function of this subreddit is also a good place to start.

Once you get the hang of Java (which will not be a nominal task, mind you), head over to the Android Developers Center to find information and resources for applying your newfound knowledge of Java to the Android platform.

There are a lot of great resources out there and it may be a bit overwhelming.

I would not rely solely on Professor Messer's videos. His videos are great, but lack some of the detail that a large certification book offers.

It also depends on yourself. Are you new to the IT field? Have you ever built a computer before, setup a wireless network, or done some troubleshooting?

Mike Meyer's Book
This book gets a lot of attention and is a good resource.

Exam Cram Series
This book is a great "cram" of all the information. It's shorter than Meyer's book but has a lot of great test preparation questions and strategies.

Those 2 books with supplements from Professor Messer's videos should give you more than enough help. Also don't be afraid to just reserach something that you are unsure of. I use other sources such as Reddit and YouTube just to further dive into things I am unsure of.

I am taking both exams on the 15th of this month and my study habits have been read the books. Then test yourself with exams. Find where your weak points are, and study them. Rinse and repeat. Everyone is different and it all depends on how quickly you want it. A lot of these questions are up to yourself and how you learn/retain knowledge.

Wendell Odom's Official Cert Guide. here is a link.

I personally haven't used any other books besides Odom's so I can't say if the others are any good or not.

There are a ton of practice tests out there, but most of them cost something. Boson's tests seem to be generally accepted as high quality, and they're the only ones I've actually used besides some free ones I found floating around out there. GoCertify is a place that comes to mind. Also, CBT nuggets and INE have some practice tests, but like Boson, they are premium so expect to pay a good price for them.

Actually, here is a link to a recent post from /u/judoisonattack who just passed ICND1 and shared what he used to study. It is very similar to what I would do.

As an additive to this, if you cannot afford the training, the RHCSA/RHCE book by Jang is an incredible resource:

http://www.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Study-Edition/dp/0071765654

I will be taking the test when I can afford it from only studying this and real-world experience through my job.

I'd also like to add on that if you want some easy real world experience setup a cheap VPS to host websites on, this will give you a fantastic taste in troubleshooting issues, installing software, securing stuff, etc... It's also an easy way to make a small extra income. :)

Training, and learning nix. Alrighty.

So, first thing's first, check out DCCCD and Collin College for some good classes. I've taken the shell scripting and intro nix classes at Richland and they were helpful. I'd already been a sysadmin for a year or two and learned a few tips and tricks from instructors who'd been there a few times already.

LPI - Linux Professionl Institue - lpi.org - Check out the essentials and LPIC I. A bit deeper than Linux+ (more on this in a minute), I hear, and a bit more respected in the circles I run in.

CompTIA - Linux+ - Because of course CompTIA is going to offer a moneygrab...err...entry level certification on Linux. It's basically, I understand, an LPI Linux Essentials with CompTIA's logo. Is that a bad thing? No, not really if you're looking to get your feet wet.

And if you're so inclined, I'm a big fan of Michael Jang's books (i.e. http://smile.amazon.com/RHCSA-Linux-Certification-Seventh-Edition/dp/0071841962/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0714AZZ2G0DT3926CJTS ). Practical, no-nonsense, and it will take you from little to no experience, to ready for your RHCSA/RHCE session in a couple of months, if you're willing to put in the time. Two of my cow-orkers and I all used Jang as our primary reference followed by an RHCE bootcamp and got our RHCSA and RHCEs. And, I'm about to use my Amazon Smile account (you're using Smile, and benefitting TheLab, right? Ask me how if you're not!) to pre-order the RHEL7 update that's going to drop soon.

Hope this helps, feel free to get in touch or grab me at a meeting if you have other questions.

-I5
No, I'm not Init6.

> I can recommend them too but where do you go to take it to the next level?

Was this done in Java? Head First over Java is a good place if you're looking for object oriented programming. I don't know where to find good object oriented programming resources for Swift, maybe someone on here can post some good OOP Swift resources.

I started reading the course material for CompTIA when I started looking at getting into IT but never got round to the exam. There was a fair amount of good stuff in the book I was reading, also a lot about stuff you really didn't need to know (like the max voltage of an IBM PCXT power supply from the last millennium).
If you are someone wanting to get into IT at ground level, with minimal working knowledge of a helpdesk, troubleshooting process or how IT as a field hangs together, I'd recommend at least reading the course material for CompTIA, then if you're still keen, do the exam, if nothing else it shows willingness to learn to an employer. After that look at the Networking+ and Security+ qualifications, or a Microsoft accreditation. Anything Office 365 these days is a licence to print money if you're looking to contract as an IT person (here in the UK as of the last 2 years or so at least).
This was the book I read, though that was about three years ago: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/125958951X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_R30vxbJ3FQJT2
Been in IT for just over three years, currently 2nd/3rd Line Engineer/Consultant and looking to go contracting in the next year. Any queries, let me know.

Actually, I am helping out a friend fresh out of school with his programming :-)

I recommend starting with a good beginner's book in the programming language of choice. Such books walk you through the basic steps - from getting set up (installing IDE/Compiler) to writing the first program that prints "Hello World".

For Java, I highly recommend "Head First Java"

In fact, all "Head First" series books are written in an engaging way (lot more pictures, liberal use of humor/puns). The style/language of these books might feel a bit silly to some but it's way better than the dry/dull language of most books that instantly bore the readers.

Also, whatever book/tutorial/online class you choose, make sure that you type all the code out and run the program. Just reading a chapter through is a terrible way to learn. You won't remember it beyond a day or two. Yes, it's slower to type the code samples/exercises out but you'll understand it much better that way.

I've bought some udemy courses (not particularly in java) though some are pretty good to at least understand what the technology is or what you can do, I've found that reading the online documentation will provide you the same knowledge (at least for some of the JS frameworks I've studied through the site) while this is not the same for a more complex language like Java, I would suggest you to take the MOOC listed in the tutorial section of this sub, as for books I would say "Head First Java" and one that I'm currently reading and have helped me to understand some of the language concepts better "Core Java Volume I" for fundamentals and volume II for advanced topics
https://www.amazon.com/Core-Java-I-Fundamentals-11th-Horstmann/dp/0135166306/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=core+java&qid=1571173232&sr=8-2
https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Java-Kathy-Sierra/dp/0596009208/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=head+first+java&qid=1571173566&sr=8-1

Hope this helps

When I studied for the RHCSA, I found that Sander Van Vugt came highly recommended. Best of all? $Free (i.e. get the free trial and go for it)

https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/red-hat-certified/9780134723990/

I also got the Ashgar Ghori book because the Michael Jang one wasn't out yet.

Jang's RHEL6 books were highly regarded, so I would expect his RHEL7 stuff to be held in similar esteem. Ghori's book seemed perfectly capable, though.

If you commit the time you could be ready in 30.


1: Make sure all materials you are using are made for the current- 901 / 902- tests.


2: If you're the self-study type, Mike Meyer's all-in-one book is recommended. Only costs 20 bucks, it's a useful resource even if you're not prepping for the test.


3: Professor Messer has a boatload of free videos for it as well.


4: You can always look it up on youtube.


Honestly the hard part is learning to pace yourself. You need to commit the time and it can be infuriating to put up learning things you already know abundantly well because you need to get through it to get to the stuff you're less knowledgeable about.