What I learnt and did in 2020
I’m a student from India and just like you, affected by the pandemic. Without much social interactions for months. I’m 16 year old and interested in science and creating stuff.
How it started
It (must have) started well. For 3 months or so, I was busy with some exam stuff and in March 25th was the day when the lock-down in India was declared. And after some days, WHO declared a global pandemic.
I had to pick a hobby like everyone so I decided to keep sticking to the thing I was already doing, which is programming 🤓. So here is a list of what I learned and created-
Some Networking
I decided to go back to basics and learned in depth how the communication protocols work.
Cryptography
I learned some concepts of cryptography and transferring of shared secrets and methods to exchange secure claims over the network.
I created a News App !
The environment of 2020 was not good and watching the news was kinda toxic 😅. Opening the news app was not a thing you would do if you want to stay calm. So, I decided to create a news app which delivers only good news!
It scraped data from google news and analyzed it using some Natural Language Processing and basic algorithms. the apps are Xenon and Positive Vibes.
Learned a New Programming Language
I learned GO, as I was interested in systems programming. I learned some concurrency and managing database and stuff with GO. I created a TCP listener with a database for my reactjs app with 400+ lines of code. And a local key-value pair web interface based data storage utility.
I learned some hacking
I was already interested with crypto and had experience with linux so I decided to do some security research and hacking. I know web development so learned different web attacks and methods to secure my apps from bad guys. I also Hacked a Live Website!.
I created a hacking community
I created hackarmour with other cool people, to share tools and resources to help each other learning security stuff and creating opensource security researches and tools. Joined more communities and made some like minded friends.
Random Things
I built a lot of random things with JavaScript, learned kinda a dozens of libraries. Reverse engineered some apps and services, and also wrote few blog posts here on Medium!
Research About Privacy and Creating EpicTraker
I was wondering about what data the websites and companies use to keep a track of us online, so I created a little utility with JavaScript to demonstrate that!.
My goals for 2021
I dont know. Whatever I did in 2020, was not planned. I may focus more on studies and preparing for the engineering entrance examinations but will continue my minor researches and stuff.
I also learned, to not to wait, for the situation to be alright. Because the situation is never in control and if we wait everything to be fine, we may reach the end of our lives.
Happy 2021 to everyone, thanks for reading. peace.
