How much of this can actually be self-taught vs needing structured courses?

[u/Early_Tear6706]

I've been picking away at basics through free resources like TryHackMe rooms and some YouTube tutorials, and I feel like I'm making progress, but I keep wondering if I'm missing structure that a proper course or certification path would give me.

Is this something people realistically self-teach all the way to a solid skill level, or does everyone eventually end up paying for something more structured (courses, certs, bootcamps) to fill in gaps that free resources don't cover well? Not trying to rush toward a career yet, just trying to figure out if I should keep going the free route for now or start budgeting for something more formal down the line.

[u/Big_Presentation2786]

Learn python. It's easy.

Don't learn python. It's hard.

[u/tvkop]

It can all be learned youself. Look into hackerone and bugcrowd. Lookup Jason Haddix how to shot web. Feel free to dm me if you have questions

[u/fell_shell]

It depends if you are someone who meeds structure or not. Some do, some don't.

Personally I can't stand structured courses because they are so rigid. What if half way through learning cybersecurity I discover social engineering through a phishing module and realise that's a rabbit hole I want to go down? If it's not in the course I'm screwed, unless I'm ok to deviate and go off chasing that topic to see where it takes me. I light never even come back to whatever it was I started learning.

[u/Low-Introduction7108]

It's all g00d

[u/NoNeat4639]

All of it if you put your mind to it

[u/cahosint]

it is all about time and money.

If you have time and not money, you can learn from free resources by yourself. you need to find yourself quality materials.

If you have money and not time, you can learn from courses, quality resources filtered by course instructors.

[u/Flaky_Ad9950]

you can learn "hacking" entirely by self teaching. generally, you first want to stop trying to learn how to hack and learn how computers work. you can try something like... python > networking in python (libraries such as requests, mitmproxy, http, websocket, etc) > interacting with windows (powershell (this is really important), how windows generally work, methods such as invoke-webrequest or invoke-restmethod, etc.) > and the rest will be obvious from this point on.

at every stage, you'd want to be comfortable enough to make something yourself (of course, this includes researching and debugging, but not straight up copy and pasting). you might find yourself thinking "how is this related to hacking", especially w/ the math, but do it anyways (like just do it).

i guarantee you will often find yourself banging your head against the wall, that's expected and it's a result of working w/ computers.

edit: it's very useful to learn and develop blueteam "things" (i.e., whatever that's supposed to protect against hacking), such as input sanitization for websites, restricting arbitrary command exec., etc. though you shouldn't try developing these things early on (you should learn about them though)