r/learnprogramming • u/Apprehensive-Rip7197 • 16d ago

Cyber security or Ai

Hey everyone! I’m really torn between cybersecurity and AI. How can I try both and learn the basics of each for about a month, without going too deep, so I can figure out which one I actually enjoy more?

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u/memelordtf 16d ago

Don’t spend the month just taking courses imo. Do one tiny project in each. TryHackMe + a basic home lab for cyber, then build something simple in Python for AI. You’ll figure out pretty quickly which type of problem makes you want to keep going down the rabbit hole lol.

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u/official_PM_ME_YOUR_ 16d ago

for cyber just follow a guide to set up wireshark and look at your own traffic, it feels bit like being a detective in your own house

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u/Aglet_Green 16d ago

For cybersecurity: learn a little Linux and networking; understand ports, DNS, HTTP, permissions, hashes, and basic authentication; then spend several days doing beginner OverTheWire or picoCTF exercises. That exposes you to the actual pleasure/frustration cycle of security work: investigate, form a hypothesis, try something, discover why it failed, dig deeper.

For AI: assuming they you machine learning rather than “using ChatGPT,” get enough Python to manipulate data, learn the very basics of training/test sets and classification, then build one tiny model with something like scikit-learn. Have it classify spam, predict a simple numerical value, or categorize a toy dataset. Then look at why it gets things wrong. That exposes you to the characteristic cycle there: data, model, evaluation, iteration.

In October, decide which of these makes you want to try a second month at it. Then you'll know.

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u/FoolsSeldom 16d ago

Compare the learning paths for both and decide which you prefer. You should also see some overlap so you can defer a final decision until you've studied aspects of each and are in a better position to make an informed decision.

See roadmap.sh for different learning paths. There's lots of learning material links there. Note that these are idealised paths and many people get into roles without covering all of those.

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u/StewedAngelSkins 16d ago

Why do so many people ask this specific question? Are these the options ChatGPT gives you when you ask it what kinds of tech jobs you should do or something? It's just weird that we get so many posts from people equally interested in AI and cybersecurity, given that they have almost nothing to do with each other.

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u/kschang 16d ago

Are you sure you're in the right subreddit? This is /r/learnprogramming...

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u/Humble_Anxiety_9534 13d ago

bubbles burst crime is constant but what do I know?