Preliminary Skills & Programming

Introduction to C++, Python, and Command-Line Scripting in the Penetration Testing Preliminary Skills & Programming course.

Introduction

Set of instructions that a computer may follow. It can be used to automate tasks, leaving specific things to be done by a machine instead of a human. Syntax and usage requirements are specific per language, but purpose keeps on being the same.

• Each programming language has its own syntax, which may require some instructions to use certain characters at the end of each statement while in another language this may not be needed.

• Variables might have different types depending on the programming language.

• Functions are normally allowed to be created. These are pieces of code responsible for some repeatable tasks. Might use arguments and return a value.

• Conditional statements are part of a programming language syntax.

• Loops are a set of instructions that need to be executed numerous times.

Level can tell how close these languages are to the hardware.

Low level	High level
More complicated, more prone to create vulnerabilities	Ease of development
Can do anything with them, as they are so closed to the machine	Less flexible
Deep understanding is required	Writing custom functionality from scratch can be difficult
Assembly	Java, Python
	They can't run on a bare OS, will need some kind of software already running

Programming Languages	Scripting Languages
Programming languages require a compiler.	Interpreted
A compiler will convert your plain-text program file into something readable by the language environment.	Software environment install on your computer can read a plain-text program file