One thing I learned from my approach when understanding cryptography in 2024 is that 3 months is almost always enough to get novice level good at anything. And properly reading textbooks with practical implementation is the only way to go. It will take some time, but will be worth it.
My brain wires are slow, and I can’t think fast enough to understand something in one pass. Get your thinking as slow as possible that you can focus on every little detail. That’s why I hate speed-runs. It feels fulfilling, but it’s so boring. I don’t want to learn something just for the sake of it.
- Understanding how before why.
- Asking when in initial stages might hamper real progress.
- Solving problems at chapter end in textbooks.
- Preferring academic lecture notes, if textbooks aren’t available.
- Avoiding tutorials.
- Implementing at least half of a textbook.
- Listen to podcast/videos at 0.75x to take notes efficiently.
- Reading mature implementations after I’ve coded a toy implementation
Although finding good textbooks are very difficult. Cryptography, or Mathematics in general, fortunately has no shortage of good textbooks, but I haven’t found comprehensible textbooks for many other topics.