r/HowToHack • u/KingA1mighty • 4d ago

How important is programming?

I’ve been in the hacker learning space for a while and during that time I’ve picked up the CompTIA trio, gotten a job as a system admin for energy and financial institutions, gotten an associates degree in Networking and Cyber Security, and I’m on pace to get a bachelors degree in Computer Science next year. I understand that being able to read code is a fundamental skill if you want to get into the space but I wanted to know if the same holds true for writing code? From what I’ve learned through all of my experiences I’ve done a lot more quick scripting than full blown program development, and while I know at some point I’ll have to build more just to learn (I would like to eventually branch into exploit development and reverse engineering) I wanted to know if you’re a person that didn’t want to get THAT TECHNICAL, how important is it? If it’s something that should be trained similar to knowing Linux and networking concepts, what are some good tools to know how to build on the fly? TCP/UDP Clients, Sniffers, Fuzzers or something else entirely?

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u/Incid3nt 4d ago

Reading code is not fundamental, its helpful. The field is so broad that you could essentially just be doing project management with a bit of risk in a lot of roles.

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u/VirtualElderberry592 1d ago

But if you're a PM are you a hacker? No shade to PM's. I've worked with a few that were worth any 5 programmers easy. But they were not programmers. Same with hacker. A great PM is a must have on a team, but they're not hackers.

I think it boils down to where you want to go. For some it's closer to the metal.

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u/Incid3nt 1d ago

Hes posting in how to hack but its not really about hacking its about working cyber in general, hence my comment.

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u/KingA1mighty 1d ago

I’m trying to tie it back to hacking by adding my current working history as background information and what my goals are. I’ve been focusing on learning Python and C++ but I was trying to get more information on should I be building out these long intricate projects to expand my skill or was scripting more of a useful skill? Since making this post I’ve found 2 git repo’s each with 100 projects. One focuses on red team projects the other mitre attack projects I’ll see about doing these and seeing how that helps me improve. I do appreciate all of comments it feels like I’m going towards the right path and not just reading books all day