I think if you have some knowledge then trial and error is good, nothing wrong with failing. But if you are truly out of your depth, the try and fail approach would be truly demoralizing!
I think if you have some knowledge then trial and error is good, nothing wrong with failing. But if you are truly out of your depth, the try and fail approach would be truly demoralizing!
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2014
- Messages
- 14,600
- Trophies
- 4
- Location
- Another World
- Website
- www.gbatemp.net
- XP
- 25,218
- Country
I think a lot of people here are basically self taught because they are passionate about technology and things like that, they see an application and really want to make something like that for themselves. Coding is rough to start with but finally making something all by yourself and seeing it work is incredibly rewarding. It's probably the same with people that write music or create videos, you start off with zero knowledge but your passion for the craft is what makes you want to learn more and more and accomplish something with what you've learned.
the thing is, there aren't all that many 'guides how to learn console hacking' and to be quite honest, this is nothing to push on your children.
If they're interested in programming of any sort (and not just in a 'I wanna program a new call of duty!') there's countless books on all kinds of programing languages, programing logics and the inner working of a computer to get started and go from there.
just know that, ultimately, this is boring and dry for 99% of the time. that 1% that we, as consumers of hacks and emulators witness are the result of hundreds of hours of people just trying to make sense of a huge mess of numbers and variables and then hundreds of hours more to check and see if they can do anything with all that understanding.
If they're interested in programming of any sort (and not just in a 'I wanna program a new call of duty!') there's countless books on all kinds of programing languages, programing logics and the inner working of a computer to get started and go from there.
just know that, ultimately, this is boring and dry for 99% of the time. that 1% that we, as consumers of hacks and emulators witness are the result of hundreds of hours of people just trying to make sense of a huge mess of numbers and variables and then hundreds of hours more to check and see if they can do anything with all that understanding.
Console hacking is more or less just higher end/OS using embedded device hacking (basically don't go too far into hacking simple PLCs or something like that, instead look to be moving into said operating system based stuff). There are plenty of books on/with notable sections concerning the security of such, and a few courses as well. Similarly there is much on general cryptography and the mathematical, implementational and other failures (though frankly for that I would probably say https://www.schneier.com/books/ and once you are done with those you will be picking your own to look at).
One of my favourite things to contemplate, and thing that I dare say every hacker I have ever encountered also uses endlessly (even if they do not know the phrase), is duality of knowledge. Example being "if you do this, or even don't do this, your system will be insecure" is how most books are written, courses taught and education/skills tested. It however very easily becomes "did they do this, is the system insecure?" and you have learned essentially the same thing. School however is fairly consistently about beating that line of thought out of you, or dangling it out of your reach until you become a professor or something.
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2002
- Messages
- 23,749
- Trophies
- 4
- Age
- 46
- Location
- Engine room, learning
- XP
- 15,662
- Country
LOGO too ? that's funny. I guess you are the first I see how knew LOGO
Oh, I remember nibble too ! like a sector/sector copy for copy protected floppy disk, and you could even make floppy bigger than announced size with some formatter! (now that I think about it, it was probably just a Bit/byte difference).
I was always curious about development, I don't think someone influenced me, or maybe a neighbor who show me his SNES copier in 1995. probably video game themselves, wanting to become a video game developer (which I never did, homebrew is like my last way to do it).
video games, then piracy (Snes copier/gba flashcarts), then homebrew influence.
Automatic Save Folder. (now dead as not working on new Firefox, you need ESR to still use it).
I closed my website, as it's not usable on new versions and I can't update or maintain it anymore.
Last edited by Cyan,
Hi ;D,
I'm flattered that you pinged me, though I should note that I have like 1% of the knowledge all other people you have pinged have
Yeah, I think there is no one that really got most stuff teached here - I personally just traversed other projects and looked through the code in hopes of understanding parts of it - I have been a lurker since the Wii homebrew scene but the switch scene is probably one of the "easiest" to understand when it comes to the code so it was the best point to get started with.
Not really ^^'
Currently for fun but I'm thinking of seriously learning reverse engineering to get to a level where I would be happy to call myself a "reverse-engineer" and maybe apply for a job - It's just that currently I wouldn't even be happy to call myself anything like that - I "develop" a CFW-package and manage to fail every major update xD There is not a lot of knowledge involved in the stuff I'm doing.
Reverse Engineering / CFW:
I'm currently reading this huge book and can say that it's pretty great when you truly want to start from 0: https://github.com/DennisYurichev/RE-for-beginners
There are some other resources that could help you with the Switch specifically but reading that would probably supply you with enough reading supplies for a long time
Homebrew:
Start learning C or C++ if you want to start developing native homebrew and look at other homebrew repos if you need some help, the libnx documentation may or may not help you too
You could also just use a "wrapper" for languages such as brew.js or pynx, those are much easier to get started with (but y'know, they don't run natively and need those wrapper homebrews)
---
All in all, it isn't hard to start
Last edited by tomGER,
I'm beginning to see that as a theme here
100% agree, it's something they are very interested in. My younger son has done some scratch programming, modding games etc.. off his own initiative, got nominated for an award via a school event.
Yep it sounds tedious work
--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
Hi @tomGER and thank you for the comprehensive reply! I am beginning to see a theme that there is no set path to learning these things. I was kind of hoping that all you guys had some advantage that I did not, but it seems you just tried harder
. Reverse engineering is an interesting subject, I have tried in the past to RE an IPA file for ios, there are programs which can attempt to compile the source code. Then have a look through it with xcode (i don't have a mac but have a dual boot pc/hackintosh). It was a bit overwhelming but I learnt some things. I will have another look at the book you linked, over 1000 pages though! I'm sure you can make a career of it if you want.
C or C++ seems a good place to start, just wish I could help my son a bit more, but I guess each of us have to learn for ourselves..
Similar threads
