Summer Internship Reading List (15 days or less)

• Google every term you don't understand
• English Wikipedia is OK for concepts
• Avoid forums / stackoverflow for facts (unless post is made by developer) and always refer to official documentation
• If you land on some "Overview" documentation section then you should read the whole chapter
• Timebox yourself
  • Take two 5-minute breaks every hour
  • Decide what you're going to read in every 25-min interval at the start of the day
  • Reserve 1-2h of every day for the task
    • If you've been stuck on something more than 45mins, ask on slack
  • Don't take more time than listed here per subject
    • You'll have the whole summer to dig into the specifics
• Use a browser extension like Pocket to save and manage your reading list
• Save directories with bookmarks for all frequently visited pages (GitHub projects, docs)

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0. Life with a Black Screen (1 day)

You will spend a lot of time in the terminal, possibly in vim through tmux through a complicated three-jump SSH tunnel.

Git and GitHub:

• Read from https://git-scm.com/docs
  • everything on the left column
  • Guides
• And from GitHub:
  • https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/
  • https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/

Your environment, editor and plugins

Shell

We like https://ohmyz.sh/ and its Git Plugin aliases.

Tmux / Screen

• https://danielmiessler.com/study/tmux/

Editor

Pick one editor and learn it well.

VIM / Emacs

• vimtutor / emacstutor / read advanced documentation & tutorials for your editor
• Plugins: https://vimawesome.com/
  • I use Pathogen
  • NERDtree
  • ctrlp or fzf, or both
  • youcompleteme or the vim default (ctrl-P in insert mode)
  • vim-flake8

Explore using a Vim/Emacs plugin for your browser so you never have to use your mouse ever again.

Example: VIMIUM

VS Code

Get some plugins:

• Remote-SSH
• optional: vim keyboard bindings

Linux Commands

For searching through code (which may or may not be yours):

• man grep / silver-searcher (man ag) / ripgrep (man rg)

Basic linux commands for management and debugging:

• man find, man ssh, man scp, man rsync
• man dmesg
• man systemctl, man journalctl
• man sysctl

Agile

Just sharing a couple of videos, to get an idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tj-lavaMkxU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ndH7B-IS4

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1. Python (4 days)

Use the python help() function in an interactive terminal and look at the in-code documentation
for every module / class / method that looks interesting to you.

1.1 stdlib (2 days)

First, follow https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/index.html and make sure everything there is clear.

Then, read https://docs.python.org/3/library/index.html, chapters:

• pdb
• string
• re
• datetime
• collections
• copy
• pprint
• itertools
• functools
• pathlib
• tempfile
• configparser
• os
• logging
• subprocess
• json
• contextlib
• importlib
• pdb

Also read on the ALL of these built-in types: https://docs.python.org/3/library/stdtypes.html#built-in-types

Task:

• Follow https://automatetheboringstuff.com/2e/chapter17/
• Implement the "Scheduled Web Comic Downloader" suggested at the end
• Download only the new comics from https://xkcd.com/ every hour
• Make sure to rate limit the downloads to 1 comic / second, or the site will eventually ban you
• Post as xkcd.py to GitHub as a private repo
• present code for review and answer comments

1.2 Other important python libs (2 days)

Install, follow tutorials and read documentation for these:

• celery
• jinja
• whitenoise
• https://3.python-requests.org/
• http://flask.pocoo.org/
• https://click.palletsprojects.com/en/7.x/
• https://docs.pipenv.org/en/latest/

Task:

• on xkcd.py: push new branch server starting from master and open pull request
• use click to implement 2 subcommands: serve and scrape
• scrape takes --from ID and --to ID optional arguments and filters comics to scrape to that interval (as implemented for the previous task)
• serve starts a Flask HTTP server with:
  • the home page is a list of links to downloaded comics
  • every comic page shows the title (comic number as <h1>) and the image (<img>with the source also served from your server)
• code review

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2. Docker and Compose (1 day)

Install and follow through:

• https://docs.docker.com/get-started/
• https://docs.docker.com/compose/gettingstarted/

Read:

• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/builder/
• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/cli/
• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/run/
• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/build/
• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/exec/
• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/kill/
• https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/commandline/push/
• https://docs.docker.com/compose/environment-variables/
• https://docs.docker.com/compose/startup-order/
• https://docs.docker.com/compose/networking/
• https://docs.docker.com/docker-hub/repos/

Task:

• Make xkcd.py repo public
• Push new branch docker starting from server and open a pull request pointing back to server
• Add a Dockerfile that installs everything and by default runs the server on port 12345
• Push it to Docker Hub
• Set up Docker Hub to build and push the image, tracking the master branch
• Make a push to the repo and check a new image is being built automagically
• code review

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3. Back-end: Django (4 days)

First, read this: https://12factor.net/

3.1 Django Tutorial (2 days)

https://www.djangoproject.com/start/

Follow this tutorial by only running Python code on Docker. Use the latest Python and install everything you need in the image by using requirements.txt or a Pipfile. Use Docker Compose to run a Postgres 12 database and use it in the tutorial.

Hint - on your machine mount the source code as a volume in the container, so you don't have to rebuild it every time.

Task:

• create a private GitHub repo for the tutorial, called django-tutorial
• set up Travis CI with Docker Compose and on each commit:
  • check your coding style with flake8
  • run the django-created unit test suite
  • set up the site using docker-compose up and use wget to check that the front page is up in 60 seconds
  • use the Travis trial period on your repo. If that's not possible, use a fresh GitHub account. If that still doesn't work, send them $5.
• set up a GitHub Action to build and push the Docker image for your tutorial after all Travis tests are successful
• code review

3.2 Django Docs (2 days)

Reset your home page to https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/

Also read these articles:

• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/django-admin/
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/databases/ – we only use PostgreSQL
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/topics/db/models/
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/migration-operations/
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/settings/
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/signals/
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/contrib/auth/
• https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/3.0/ref/contrib/admin/

Task: inject a back door in your tutorial

• if an anonymous user visits /hax then they become logged in as an Admin called hax
• the hax admin has full user rights
• the hax admin should be created if it does not exist
• if the user is authenticated when visiting /hax then they are redirected to the home page (/) with no change
• do all of the above on a branch hax that started from master. Same as before, open a pull request for a permanent URL to the latest diff.
• code review

At last, read this again: https://12factor.net/. Everything should make more sense now.

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4. Front-end: ReactJS (3 days)

Follow: https://reactjs.org/tutorial/tutorial.html

Read:

• Main Concepts: all pages starting from https://reactjs.org/docs/hello-world.html
• https://reactjs.org/docs/web-components.html
• https://reactjs.org/docs/jsx-in-depth.html
• https://reactjs.org/docs/strict-mode.html
• https://reactjs.org/docs/refs-and-the-dom.html
• https://reactjs.org/docs/integrating-with-other-libraries.html
• https://reactjs.org/docs/forwarding-refs.html

Also take a look at all these different projects and see what they do:

• the ones listed in this guide
• https://redux.js.org/
• https://react-redux.js.org/
• https://nextjs.org/
• https://reactrouter.com/
• https://babeljs.io/docs/en/
• https://webpack.js.org/
• https://sass-lang.com/
• http://lesscss.org/
• https://stylus-lang.com/

Notice the overlap and differing scope for these tools: one compiler (Babel), bundlers (Webpack or any of these), CSS-on-steroids type projects (less, sass, stylus, how React does it), state management (Redux, MobX), …

Task:

• Push new branch react started from hax, open a pull request pointing back to it.
• Switch the Django Tutorial UI to ReactJS
• Create Django Views for all data that was directly rendered in the old UI templates
• Make sure the users are authenticated when accessing these Views
• Hit those Views with GET requests from ReactJS to get the data on every page load
• code review

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5. HashiCorp products (3 days)

For each one of these do the track "Getting Started" and read all the linked documentation.

5.1 Vagrant (<1 day)

Follow "Getting Started": https://learn.hashicorp.com/vagrant/

Read:

• https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/vagrantfile
• https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/vagrantfile/tips
• https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/boxes
• https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/cli/up
• https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/cli/destroy.html
• shared folders: rsync, nfs

Task:

• make tutorial repo public on GitHub
• make an account with DigitalOcean
• send them $5 or profit from student credit
• install this plugin to use Vagrant to provision DigitalOcean VMs
• make it so vagrant up boots up your Django tutorial on Docker Compose on that DigitalOcean VM
• add code in the tutorial repo
  • Don't publish your passwords or account keys! Use environment variables, maybe this plugin
  • use branch vagrant started from hax, open pull request pointing back to hax
• code review

Consul, Vault (<1 day)

5.2 Consul

Follow "Getting Started": https://learn.hashicorp.com/consul/?track=getting-started#getting-started

Read:

• https://www.consul.io/docs/glossary
• https://www.consul.io/docs/commands
• https://www.consul.io/docs/agent
• https://www.consul.io/docs/agent/dns
• https://www.consul.io/docs/agent/options
• https://www.consul.io/docs/agent/kv
• https://www.consul.io/docs/faq

5.3 Vault

Follow "Getting Started": https://learn.hashicorp.com/vault/

Read:

• https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/what-is-vault
• https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/use-cases
• https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/concepts/seal
• https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/consul
• https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/configuration

5.4 Nomad (1 day)

Follow "Getting Started": https://learn.hashicorp.com/nomad/

Read:

• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/internals/scheduling
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/configuration
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/job
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/group
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/task
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/service
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/env
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/job-specification/template
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/schedulers
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/drivers/docker
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/drivers/qemu
• https://www.nomadproject.io/docs/runtime/environment
• https://www.nomadproject.io/api-docs – Jobs, Nodes, Deployments, Allocations, Status, System

Task:

• move your django tutorial from Docker Compose to Consul + Nomad
• add Nomad templates and configuration to your Django Tutorial repository
• download and run Nomad, Consul and the tutorial on the Travis CI. Same as before, test if the home page is up by using wget
• use branch nomad started from hax, open pull request pointing back to hax
• code review

5.5 Packer (<1 day)

Follow "Getting Started": https://learn.hashicorp.com/packer/

Read:

• https://www.packer.io/docs/templates/user-variables
• https://www.packer.io/docs/terminology
• https://www.packer.io/docs/commands/build
• https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/vagrant
• https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/qemu
• https://www.packer.io/docs/communicators/ssh

Task:

• create a QEMU or VirtualBox image of Debian Stable with Docker, Docker Compose and your Django tutorial installed and ready to go when the VM boots
• add process to the Django Tutorial repository, branch packer started from hax, pull request
• code review

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6. Liquid Investigations

Project Docs Home Page: https://github.com/liquidinvestigations/docs/wiki

Reading list:

• architecture https://github.com/liquidinvestigations/docs/wiki/Architecture
• contributing https://github.com/liquidinvestigations/docs/wiki/Contributing
• installation https://github.com/liquidinvestigations/docs/wiki/Installation
• maintenance https://github.com/liquidinvestigations/docs/wiki/Maintenance

With a working environment you can start solving "Good First Issues": https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aliquidinvestigations+label%3A"good+first+issue"+state%3Aopen&type=Issues