How to discretely learn code at work lol

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I work at a desk job, very small office.

Any idea’s on what the best way to discretely learn code? lol. I can’t really openly do FCC or watch youtube on my computer. I listen to podcasts / youtube vids on my phone, which is helpful. But any other ideas? I emailed myself algorithms to try to solve in the console, but can’t do that too much lol. Messing around in the console is helpful but sorta aimless sometimes. I know this is sort of a weird quiestion, but any ideas? lol

thanks

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Sounds like it might be difficult to learn while at your job so you have a few options:

  1. Wait until you get home and spend a few hours each evening learning to code.
  2. If you have some money saved / can take a cost of living loan / can afford to not have an income - you could resign and learn full time.
  3. Resign and attend a university so you’re a full time student in a structured environment again you’ll take out student loans + a cost of living loan.

TL;DR you can wait and code at home OR resign and learn full time either on your own or in a structured environment. I don’t know about your living circumstances / financial abilities but hopefully this post gives you some insight and ideas on how to continue - make sure your really think about the decision and choose what’s right for you.

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Unfortunately, can’t afford to resign and learn full time.

I mean, I know I can wait until I go home to learn lol, just wondering if anyone has some resources. Great stuff to listen to, maybe books I can email myself or something etc. Not sure if it’s too possible, just sort of throwing it out there to see if there are any resources.

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That’s understandable and again I’m going from a general standpoint - it always needs to be customized to you and only you can make that decision - I can only provide you with ideas.

You could email Introduction :: Eloquent JavaScript to yourself and read it. Then again if you can email yourself books - is FCC blocked at your job? If wasting time is totally cool I don’t see the difference between reading a book and browsing the web.

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What do you do in work?

If you have lots of time where you have nothing to do then if you can open a book you can also open a code editor.
Listening, reading and talking is good, but without coding you won’t learn it.
Another thing is, if your work is a stressful environment, it might be hard to learn there.

But regarding the question, what about you split your screen? You can do this in win10 at least by pressing alt+arrow (left or right) and on one side of the screen you can have your work software and on the other a code editor.
Otherwise I don’t know, you cannot practice coding discretely… you either code or you don’t :smiley:

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Not knowing what your workplace is like, I’m not sure if these will be helpful, but-

I write pseudo-code on paper scraps during my down time to try to solve puzzles without coding. It really makes me think about my logic.
I read books when I’m in my classroom and the kids are sleeping- no computers in there, but books are ok.
I use my entire lunch break learning code on one of the public computers if no one else is using it. I would bring my own, but the Wi-Fi is completely locked down…
I like to listen to general tech podcasts on my commute just so I know what is going on in the world of tech- I like Tech Stuff.

I am getting paid to do a job, so my first priority is to get that done. I’m currently thinking of some ways to code that would be beneficial for my company- a curated webpage of resources we use, or an html email newsletter to send to parents. Then I will be able to justify doing more coding on the job.

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“aircrack-ng” to break the WiFi password, VPN or Tor to bypass any filters.

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I don’t really feel the need to break into my workplace’s wi-fi… it seems uncouth.

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If you need to keep your job I would say learn before by arriving early, use your lunch break and then learn after work and on weekends. You can also save your vacation days and use them for a study Staycation…
There are also phone apps to learn… youtube videos to watch…
For coding I love the encode app

Hope those ideas help some

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nsuchy, this is my case, but not for an unlimited time, possibly 6 months… I know the answer depends on many factors, but how long would you estimate a very dedicated individual would need to be sans income before they can start making money as a web developer?

I am currently studying from 9am to 4pm…

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I dont know what happened to my previous answer.

When I was still working I did this

Use phone apps to learn and watch related videos
For coding iphone has an app called encode, very cool, there are others

Arrive early and do some reading

Use your short breaks to read an article, use your lunch time to study, conference rooms are typically empty at that time, I didn’t use their wifi

Study after arriving home. I didn’t do much of this because other commitments and I study better in the morning, so yes, I was getting up at 5am…

Use commute time, I commuted by train, so I was able to study then too, If you drive, you can listen to podcasts on design and other topics

Hope those tips help!!

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Was kinda joking but I doubt most people on this forum have any idea how to use the aircrack-ng suite to compromise secure networks. (and there’s always a way), though if you’re ever up for a challenge now :wink:

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I work at a department store that has public wi-fi, so I’ve been known to watch a YouTube video or two off my phone during my breaks.

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Tying the learning of a new skill into helping your employer is a great way to learn that skill! As long as you are completing your existing job responsibilities, this shows initiative and usually is viewed very favorably. Years ago I would look for ways to use new technology and skills to help out my employer, and consequently also learn those skills. That being said, if your employer is weird and doesn’t want you doing something like creating an internal webpage of resources or an html newsletter, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness because you were only trying to help out the company, therefore there’s valid justification for your actions.

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Just beware of being caught. Some companies have strict policies on cracking internal protections, trying to, or even just having the tools on corporate computers. Corporate policy might result in disciplinary action or even immediate termination. YMMV.

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  1. I was joking
  2. MAC Address spoofing goes a far way far - if it’s a personal computers can have any software - for workplaces that do not allow bringing in outside systems - even a small android phone is capable of running tools like aircrack-ng - I could perform the capture of the auth packet without being noticed (this is where MAC Spoofing is useful) then run analysis on my home computer. I could go on and provide you with a flat out plan for compromising networks large and small but it’s not worth that much effort when I was jokingly giving the user a challenge. If you really are interested though feel free to shoot me a private message and we can discuss further :slight_smile:

TL;DR I was joking but there’s always a way you can break security and not get caught by corporate.

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There is no way an employee can even try to break corporate security and not get caught and fired - you can pretty much kiss a career in tech goodbye if ever terminated for security violations

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No worries, I knew you were joking. I just thought I’d throw that out so folks really new to all this wouldn’t just blindly go downloading aircrack-ng on a work PC.

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I really do not want to be rude but please consider the following:

  • I doubt most people on this forum are capable of both successfully installing and configuring aircack-ng.
  • Then launching an attack without someone walking them through step by step.
  • aircrack-ng isn’t exactly user friendly and launching an attack isn’t simple as 1-2-3 it’s a process done by it’s suite of tools that requires a lot of human involvement.
  • You need to use multiple tools from the suite and time them exactly to make it work.
  • If they successfully grab the auth packets and store them - they still need to crack the packet (the wordlists that are successful these days have a high price - not saying people here cannot afford them but they’d really think about how important breaking into the network is before ordering and spending money on their attacks)
  • Then they have to run the wordlist against the packet and hope it’s solved within a reasonable amount of time.

That being said I felt comfortable joking about it as I know most people on this forum are learning to code - not exploit corporate networks - the few people here that I think are capable of launching an attack with success would have to really think hard of whether it was worth both the time and money investment.

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Look for any work task that you might be able to do via coding. It will take time to be able to detect those kind of tasks but here’s some examples:

  • If your office uses google’s gsuite (like gmail, spreadsheet, docs, etc) you can actually do a lot of scripting in javascript. For example creating a custom resusable function in google spreadsheet that checks if the values of one sheet’s cells exists in another sheet or document.

  • You can learn python to automate menial everyday tasks like sending emails, logging data into spreadsheets, crawling websites for data/info, and writing template documents, etc. This is a very good book to get you started.

  • Hey if you can’t resist visiting coding websites at work and need a quick way to change the page, you could write a chrome extension in javascript that listens to a specific keyboard input and opens a new tab or visit a work related-website. Or write one that will actually help you be more productive on the web.

It’s kinda hard to give many suggestions not knowing what you do at your job, but if you use a computer at work chances are most of your computer related tasks can be coded if not automated. I’m lucky I have a part-time web dev job but everytime I get a work task the first thought I have is how can I use code to do this task?

Sometimes it’s actually faster to the task manually and coding it would take much longer, but trust me it worth it if you ever get that task again so you can have a program do it in seconds instead of minutes/hours. Also it’s a way to train yourself with real world developer experience.

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