Day 0: Setting up my cybersecurity learning environment

Asma Larbi — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:19:53 +0000

My first step into cybersecurity

On a Thursday afternoon, I was trying to figure out what to do next, while staring at an empty browser tab.

Why a separate account

You might be asking yourself: what's the benefit of all that? It's not just about having a clean environment for the security tools I'll be using — it's also about separating my personal and learning life so I can stay focused without distractions, and protecting my personal data in case any of the tools I'm working with turn out to be untrustworthy.

My stack

After a bit of research, here's the stack I settled on for this journey:

VS Code — for writing and organizing code
Git & GitHub — for version control and sharing my work
Python — because most security tools and scripts rely on it
WSL2 + Ubuntu — my first real exposure to the Linux command line, all while staying on Windows, an OS I'm already comfortable with

I chose all of these based on a few criteria, especially popularity — which means access to communities and resources that can help solve any problem I run into along the way.

The learning path ahead

But all of this setup would be useless without real knowledge to back it up. For that, I chose Harvard's CS50 series — starting with the basics of computer science, then moving to Python, and finally an introduction to cybersecurity. This order isn't random — I need the fundamentals before I can understand Python properly, and I need Python before diving into cybersecurity-specific tools and scripts.

Closing

I'm really excited to share my progress with you throughout this journey — feel free to follow along for updates.

DEV Community: Asma Larbi

Day 0: Setting up my cybersecurity learning environment

Why a separate account

My stack

The learning path ahead

Closing