Foundational Skills

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 09:54:20 +0100

In his recent newsletter titled Two Wonderful Investments In Your Programming Career, Rob Conery talks about learning the “foundational” skills of the industry. This got me thinking; what would I include on my list of foundational skills?

In his newsletter, Rob lists five foundational technologies but calls out two in particular that stand out to him:

Your Editor
SQL

I’d agree on both counts. Pick a text editor and learn it well. It doesn’t matter if you don’t pick the most popular, or the one your colleagues use. Pick one you like and invest time in learning how to use it.

Working in the Dark

hello@bill.dev (Bill) — Mon, 23 May 2022 19:06:51 +0000

In episode 114 of Darknet Diaries, Jack Rhysider talks to HD Moore the creator of Metasploit. The whole episode is worth a listen, but wanted to share this section from the last few minutes of the episode (no spoilers) where Jack summarises the skills HD has demonstrated developing Metasploit. One skill in particular stands out for being hard to quantify, and often overlooked; working in the dark.

Jack begins:

“I find this particular skill to be one of the most important skills when dealing with technology: Which is being comfortable doing things in the dark, in areas that you have no knowledge of or visibility into. Because when working in IT you are constantly faced with new challenges or problems that you have no idea how to solve. The problem might even be so weird that you don’t even know what to Google.

Skills on Bill Glover

Foundational Skills

Working in the Dark