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Comment by jsjohnst | Hacker News Reader

> I always thought that IRC bots are a great way to learn a new language

I personally use the project “writing an authoritative DNS server” as mine. Forces you to think about data structures, TCP and UDP, bit packing, file/DB handling, parsing, concurrency, serialization, etc. If you don’t know DNS really well, wouldn’t be as easy, but once you know it backwards and forwards it’s a really a great way to push a language your learning.

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meh.. i wrote my first IRC bot when i was like 12. I don't think i'd get very far writing a DNS server as a 12 yr old

If you can write an IRC bot from scratch, you can do an authoritative DNS server, don’t sell yourself short.

IRC is more immediate and self gratifying. Very important things for a self-taught 12 yo. Not that dns isnt cool, just probably not the best recommendation for a young programmer.

How would one start with learning those concepts first? I've been wanting a good way to learn networking that I can code along to in my preferred language

> I've been wanting a good way to learn networking

1) Do you learn best by reading books, following tutorials, or watching videos?

2) What programming language do you know best / second best?

Happy to dig up a couple sources for you if you limit the scope a bit via the two questions above.

I tend to combine books and tutorials... the more in-depth the better.

I know Python best but am very quickly getting just as comfortable with Go. Would probably want to do this work in Go

Also maybe Rust cuz I want to get around it someday? For Rust I would need more “here’s the literal code”. Python or Go I could probably do it just from pseudo code or high level descriptions

Ok, I’ll try to send you some stuff this week. Python/Go/Rust is easily doable.

Thank you! much appreciated

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