I think a good developer is composed of many things, and LeetCode/HackerRank type learning can help you become better at only a small subset of those things.
It's like trying to get your body into good shape, you need to work on different parts of the body, not just focus on your left arm (unless your left arm is especially weak and you want to focus on that).
Years ago when parsing XML in Java, to my surprise at the time, the parser by default would try to resolve external DTDs while parsing, ouch, what a way to let someone DDoS your system.
Unfortunately YAML was even worse in that regard, as it allowed arbitrary code execution as seen in recent CVEs...
I wanted to give Windows/WSL another try, but unfortunately installing WSL on a clean install of Windows 11 gives a blue screen of death boot loop on my laptop. Seems to be related to this 3 year old bug: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4784
> has chosen an industry with access to pyramid scheme money.
Seems you can confusing cryptography with cryptocurrency, this guys is a cryptographer, that's a proper expert level security guy, nothing to do with pyramid scheme money.
I’m pretty sure that’s fully accurate. Filippo mentioned one of his backers is the Interchain Foundation [1], and several others of his backers are at the very least cryptocurrency/web3 adjacent. Note, the GP didn’t say that Filippo is working directly on cryptocurrency - but that the funding is likely (at least in part) coming from cryptocurrency profits.
Cryptocurrency is one way of applying cryptography, and the article mentions "Filecoin", whatever that is.
Even aside from cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs and that kind of stuff, there's a lot to question when it comes to the ethics of the computer security industry. A lot of it is snake oil, like Firewalls that basically whitelist everything so as not to become annoying. A lot of it is a racket (e.g. you can't get insurance for your company if it doesn't have antivirus software). VPNs basically make money by helping people break the law by circumventing geoblocking. I could go on, but I won't.
It's like trying to get your body into good shape, you need to work on different parts of the body, not just focus on your left arm (unless your left arm is especially weak and you want to focus on that).