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Firmware Guide

A guide covering the Firmware the applications, libraries and tools that will make you a better and more efficient with Firmware development.

Note: You can easily convert this markdown file to a PDF in VSCode using this handy extension Markdown PDF.


Table of Contents

  1. Firmware Learning Resources

  2. Firmware Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

  3. Virtualization

  4. File systems

  5. Security Tools and Frameworks

  6. Networking

  7. Assembly Development

  8. C/C++ Development

  9. C# Development

  10. .NET Development

  11. Python Development

  12. Rust Development

Firmware Learning Resources

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Firmware is a software program that comes embedded in a piece of hardware such as a keyboard, hard drive, BIOS, or a video card. It usually provides basic functions of a device and sometimes only provide services to higher-level software.

Online Embedded Systems Courses | Harvard University

Internet of Things Graduate Program | Stanford Online

Embedded Systems Certificate | UCSC Silicon Valley Extension

Embedded Systems Technology (EET) | ODU Online

Learn Embedded Systems with Online Courses and Classes | edX

Top Embedded Systems Courses Online | Udemy

Top Embedded C Courses Online | Coursera

Embedded Systems | Udacity Free Courses

Embedded Linux Online Course - Arm®

Software Development Online Courses | Coursera

Top Software Engineering Courses | Coursera

Learn Software Development with Online Courses and Lessons | edX

Firmware Tools, Libraries, and Frameworks

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Coreboot is a replacement for your BIOS / UEFI with a strong focus on boot speed, security and flexibility. It is designed to boot your operating system as fast as possible without any compromise to security, with no back doors.

TianoCore is a community project supporting an open source implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). EDK II is a modern, feature-rich, cross-platform firmware development environment for the UEFI and UEFI Platform Initialization (PI) specifications.

EDK II is a modern, feature-rich, cross-platform firmware development environment for the UEFI and PI specifications .

OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system targeting embedded devices. Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management.

OpenSK is an open-source implementation for security keys written in Rust that supports both FIDO U2F and FIDO2 standards.

Linux Vendor Firmware Service(LVFS) is a secure portal which allows hardware vendors to upload firmware updates.

fwupd is a simple daemon to allow session software to update firmware. The goal og project is to make updating firmware on Linux automatic, safe and reliable.

CHIPSEC is a framework for analyzing the security of PC platforms including hardware, system firmware (BIOS/UEFI), and platform components. It includes a security test suite, tools for accessing various low level interfaces, and forensic capabilities. It can be run on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and UEFI shell.

Secure boot is a security standard developed by members of the PC industry to help make sure that a device boots(Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS) using only software(such as bootloaders, OS, UEFI drivers, and utilities) that is trusted by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

Trusted Platform Module (TPM is a technology module designed to provide hardware-based, security-related functions. A TPM chip is a secure crypto-processor that is designed to carry out cryptographic operations.

Intel® oneAPI Base Toolkit is a foundational kit that enables developers of all types to build, test, and deploy performance-driven, data-centric applications across CPUs, GPUs, and FPGAs. For more specialized workloads, use the Base Kit with one or more add-on toolkits.

Intel® oneAPI HPC Toolkit is toolkit that delivers fast DPC++, C++, Fortran, OpenMP, and MPI applications that scale.

Intel® oneAPI IoT Toolkit is a toolkit for building high-performing, efficient, reliable solutions that run at the network’s edge.

Intel® oneAPI Rendering Toolkit is a toolit for accelerating High-Fidelity Rendering and Visualization Applications with Powerful Libraries.

Intel® AI Analytics Toolkit is a toolkit that helps you achieve end-to-end performance for AI workloads.

Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit is a toolkit that you help you harness the full potential of AI across multiple Intel® architectures.

System76 Firmware is a software package that has a CLI(command-line inferface) tool for installing firmware updates. Also, included is the system76-firmware-daemon package, which has a systemd service that exposes a DBUS API for handling firmware updates.

Firmware Manager is a generic framework and GTK UI for firmware updates from system76-firmware and fwupd, written in Rust.

Heimdall is a cross-platform open-source tool suite used to flash firmware (aka ROMs) onto Samsung mobile devices.

Nexmon is a C-based firmware patching framework for Broadcom/Cypress WiFi chips that enables you to write your own firmware patches, for example, to enable monitor mode with radiotap headers and frame injection.

Firmware Analysis Toolkit is a toolkit built in order to help security researchers analyze and identify vulnerabilities in IoT and embedded device firmware. This is built in order to use for the "Offensive IoT Exploitation" training conducted by Attify.

Firmware Analysis and Comparison Tool is a tool intended to automate most of the firmware analysis process. It unpacks arbitrary firmware files and processes several analyses. Additionally, it can compare several images or single files.

Mellanox firmware update and query utility is a utility that enables scanning the server machine for available Mellanox adapters and indicates whether firmware update is required for each adapter.

Mellanox FlexBoot is a multiprotocol remote boot technology that delivers unprecedented flexibility in how IT Managers can provision or repurpose their datacenter servers. FlexBoot enables remote boot over InfiniBand or Ethernet using Boot over InfiniBand, over Ethernet, or Boot over iSCSI (Bo-iSCSI). Combined with Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) technologies available in ConnectX®-3 and onwards adapters, FlexBoot gives IT Managers the flexibility to deploy servers with one adapter card into InfiniBand or Ethernet networks with the ability to boot from LAN or remote storage targets.

QMK Toolbox is a Toolbox companion for QMK Firmware. It provides a collection of flashing tools packaged into one app. It supports auto-detection and auto-flashing of firmware to keyboards.

QMK(Quantum Mechanical Keyboard) Firmware is an open-source keyboard firmware for Atmel AVR and Arm USB controllers, and more specifically, the OLKB product line, the ErgoDox EZ keyboard, and the Clueboard product line.

TMK Keyboard Firmware is keyboard firmwares for Atmel AVR and Arm Cortex-M.

Virtualization

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HVM (Hardware Virtual Machine) is a virtualization type that provides the ability to run an operating system directly on top of a virtual machine without any modification, as if it were run on the bare-metal hardware.

PV(ParaVirtualization) is an efficient and lightweight virtualization technique introduced by the Xen Project team, later adopted by other virtualization solutions. PV does not require virtualization extensions from the host CPU and thus enables virtualization on hardware architectures that do not support Hardware-assisted virtualization.

Virtualization-based Security (VBS) is a hardware virtualization feature to create and isolate a secure region of memory from the normal operating system.

Hypervisor-Enforced Code Integrity (HVCI) is a mechanism whereby a hypervisor, such as Hyper-V, uses hardware virtualization to protect kernel-mode processes against the injection and execution of malicious or unverified code. Code integrity validation is performed in a secure environment that is resistant to attack from malicious software, and page permissions for kernel mode are set and maintained by the hypervisor.

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko.

QEMU is a fast processor emulator using a portable dynamic translator. QEMU emulates a full system, including a processor and various peripherals. It can be used to launch a different Operating System without rebooting the PC or to debug system code.

Hyper-V enables running virtualized computer systems on top of a physical host. These virtualized systems can be used and managed just as if they were physical computer systems, however they exist in virtualized and isolated environment. Special software called a hypervisor manages access between the virtual systems and the physical hardware resources. Virtualization enables quick deployment of computer systems, a way to quickly restore systems to a previously known good state, and the ability to migrate systems between physical hosts.

VirtManager is a graphical tool for managing virtual machines via libvirt. Most usage is with QEMU/KVM virtual machines, but Xen and libvirt LXC containers are well supported. Common operations for any libvirt driver should work.

oVirt is an open-source distributed virtualization solution, designed to manage your entire enterprise infrastructure. oVirt uses the trusted KVM hypervisor and is built upon several other community projects, including libvirt, Gluster, PatternFly, and Ansible.Founded by Red Hat as a community project on which Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is based allowing for centralized management of virtual machines, compute, storage and networking resources, from an easy-to-use web-based front-end with platform independent access.

HyperKit is a toolkit for embedding hypervisor capabilities in your application. It includes a complete hypervisor, based on xhyve/bhyve, which is optimized for lightweight virtual machines and container deployment. It is designed to be interfaced with higher-level components such as the VPNKit and DataKit. HyperKit currently only supports macOS using the Hypervisor.framework making it a core component of Docker Desktop for Mac.

Intel® Graphics Virtualization Technology (Intel® GVT) is a full GPU virtualization solution with mediated pass-through, starting from 4th generation Intel Core (TM) processors with Intel processor graphics(Broadwell and newer). It can be used to virtualize the GPU for multiple guest virtual machines, effectively providing near-native graphics performance in the virtual machine and still letting your host use the virtualized GPU normally.

Apple Hypervisor is a frameowrk that builds virtualization solutions on top of a lightweight hypervisor, without third-party kernel extensions. Hypervisor provides C APIs so you can interact with virtualization technologies in user space, without writing kernel extensions (KEXTs). As a result, the apps you create using this framework are suitable for distribution on the Mac App Store.

Apple Virtualization Framework is a framework that provides high-level APIs for creating and managing virtual machines on Apple silicon and Intel-based Mac computers. This framework is used to boot and run a Linux-based operating system in a custom environment that you define. It also supports the Virtio specification, which defines standard interfaces for many device types, including network, socket, serial port, storage, entropy, and memory-balloon devices.

Apple Paravirtualized Graphics Framework is a framework that implements hardware-accelerated graphics for macOS running in a virtual machine, hereafter known as the guest. The operating system provides a graphics driver that runs inside the guest, communicating with the framework in the host operating system to take advantage of Metal-accelerated graphics.

Cloud Hypervisor is an open source Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) that runs on top of KVM. The project focuses on exclusively running modern, cloud workloads, on top of a limited set of hardware architectures and platforms. Cloud workloads refers to those that are usually run by customers inside a cloud provider. Cloud Hypervisor is implemented in Rust and is based on the rust-vmm crates.

VMware vSphere Hypervisor is a bare-metal hypervisor that virtualizes servers; allowing you to consolidate your applications while saving time and money managing your IT infrastructure.

Xen is focused on advancing virtualization in a number of different commercial and open source applications, including server virtualization, Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS), desktop virtualization, security applications, embedded and hardware appliances, and automotive/aviation.

Ganeti is a virtual machine cluster management tool built on top of existing virtualization technologies such as Xen or KVM and other open source software. Once installed, the tool assumes management of the virtual instances (Xen DomU).

Packer is an open source tool for creating identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration. Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel. Packer does not replace configuration management like Chef or Puppet. In fact, when building images, Packer is able to use tools like Chef or Puppet to install software onto the image.

Vagrant is a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past. It provides easy to configure, reproducible, and portable work environments built on top of industry-standard technology and controlled by a single consistent workflow to help maximize the productivity and flexibility of you and your team.

Parallels Desktop is a Desktop Hypervisor that delivers the fastest, easiest and most powerful application for running Windows/Linux on Mac (including the new Apple M1 chip) and ChromeOS.

VMware Fusion is a Desktop Hypervisor that deliver desktop and ‘server’ virtual machines, containers and Kubernetes clusters to developers, and IT professionals on the Mac.

VMware Workstation is a hosted hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems; it enables users to set up virtual machines on a single physical machine, and use them simultaneously along with the actual machine.

File systems

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GlusterFS is a free and open source scalable network filesystem. Gluster is a scalable network filesystem. Using common off-the-shelf hardware, you can create large, distributed storage solutions for media streaming, data analysis, and other data- and bandwidth-intensive tasks.

Ceph is a software-defined storage solution designed to address the object, block, and file storage needs of data centers adopting open source as the new norm for high-growth block storage, object stores and data lakes. Ceph provides enterprise scalable storage while keeping CAPEX and OPEX costs in line with underlying bulk commodity disk prices.

Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) is a distributed file system that handles large data sets running on commodity hardware. It is used to scale a single Apache Hadoop cluster to hundreds (and even thousands) of nodes. HDFS is one of the major components of Apache Hadoop, the others being MapReduce and YARN.

ZFS is an enterprise-ready open source file system and volume manager with unprecedented flexibility and an uncompromising commitment to data integrity.

OpenZFS is an open-source storage platform. It includes the functionality of both traditional file systems and volume manager. It has many advanced features including:

  • Protection against data corruption.
  • Integrity checking for both data and metadata.
  • Continuous integrity verification and automatic "self-healing" repair.

Btrfs is a modern copy on write (CoW) filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while also focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. Its main features and benefits are:

  • Snapshots which do not make the full copy of files
  • RAID - support for software-based RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10
  • Self-healing - checksums for data and metadata, automatic detection of silent data corruptions

Squashfs is a compressed read-only filesystem for Linux. It uses zlib, lz4, lzo, or xz compression to compress files, inodes and directories. Inodes in the system are very small and all blocks are packed to minimize data overhead.

Apple File System (APFS) is the default file system for Mac computers using macOS 10.13 or later, features strong encryption, space sharing, snapshots, fast directory sizing, and improved file system fundamentals.

NTFS(New Technology File System) is the primary file system for recent versions of Windows and Windows Server—provides a full set of features including security descriptors, encryption, disk quotas, and rich metadata, and can be used with Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) to provide continuously available volumes that can be accessed simultaneously from multiple nodes of a failover cluster.

exFAT(Extended File Allocation Table ) is the file system that was the successor to FAT32 in the FAT family of file systems. It was optimized for flash memory such as USB flash drives and SD cards.

Security Tools and Frameworks

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Security Standards, Frameworks and Benchmarks

STIGs Benchmarks - Security Technical Implementation Guides

CIS Benchmarks - CIS Center for Internet Security

NIST - Current FIPS

ISO Standards Catalogue

Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (CC) is an international standard (ISO / IEC 15408) for computer security. It allows an objective evaluation to validate that a particular product satisfies a defined set of security requirements.

ISO 22301 is the international standard that provides a best-practice framework for implementing an optimised BCMS (business continuity management system).

ISO27001 is the international standard that describes the requirements for an ISMS (information security management system). The framework is designed to help organizations manage their security practices in one place, consistently and cost-effectively.

ISO 27701 specifies the requirements for a PIMS (privacy information management system) based on the requirements of ISO 27001. It is extended by a set of privacy-specific requirements, control objectives and controls. Companies that have implemented ISO 27001 will be able to use ISO 27701 to extend their security efforts to cover privacy management.

EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a privacy and data protection law that supersedes existing national data protection laws across the EU, bringing uniformity by introducing just one main data protection law for companies/organizations to comply with.

CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) is a data privacy law that took effect on January 1, 2020 in the State of California. It applies to businesses that collect California residents’ personal information, and its privacy requirements are similar to those of the EU’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) is a global information security standard designed to prevent fraud through increased control of credit card data.

SOC 2 is an auditing procedure that ensures your service providers securely manage your data to protect the interests of your comapny/organization and the privacy of their clients.

NIST CSF is a voluntary framework primarily intended for critical infrastructure organizations to manage and mitigate cybersecurity risk based on existing best practice.

Security Tools

Netdata is high-fidelity infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting, real-time monitoring Agent collects thousands of metrics from systems, hardware, containers, and applications with zero configuration. It runs permanently on all your physical/virtual servers, containers, cloud deployments, and edge/IoT devices, and is perfectly safe to install on your systems mid-incident without any preparation.

IDA Pro(Interactive DisAssembler Professional) is a programmable and multi-processor disassembler combined with a local/remote debugger and along with a complete plugin programming environment. It's a great tool for testing and discovering security vulnerabilities.

Ghidra is a software reverse engineering (SRE) framework developed by NSA's Research Directorate for NSA's cybersecurity mission. It helps analyze any malicious code and malware like viruses, and can give cybersecurity professionals a better understanding of potential vulnerabilities in their networks and systems.

DataWave is an ingest/query framework that leverages Apache Accumulo to provide fast, secure data access.

Emissary is a P2P based data-driven workflow engine that runs in a heterogeneous possibly widely dispersed, multi-tiered P2P network of compute resources. Workflow itineraries are not pre-planned as in conventional workflow engines, but are discovered as more information is discovered about the data.

MADCert is a cross-platform tool that consists of a certificate generator, a file system certificate manager, and a command line interface for the purposes of testing.

BLESS(Bastion's Lambda Ephemeral SSH Service) is an SSH Certificate Authority that runs as an AWS Lambda function and is used to sign SSH public keys.

Zuul is an L7 application gateway that provides capabilities for dynamic routing, monitoring, resiliency, security, and more.

Chaos Monkey is a resiliency tool that helps applications tolerate random instance failures. It is fully integrated with Spinnaker, the continuous delivery platform. Chaos Monkey will work with any backend that Spinnaker supports (AWS, Google Compute Engine, Azure, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry).

Priam is a tool/process for backup/recovery, Token Management, and Centralized Configuration management for Cassandra.

Vector is an on-host performance monitoring framework which exposes hand picked high resolution metrics to every engineer’s browser.

Control Groups(Cgroups) is a Linux kernel feature that allows you to allocate resources such as CPU time, system memory, network bandwidth, or any combination of these resources for user-defined groups of tasks (processes) running on a system.

Libgcrypt is a general purpose cryptographic library originally based on code from GnuPG.

Aircrack-ng is a network software suite consisting of a detector, packet sniffer, WEP and WPA/WPA2-PSK cracker and analysis tool for 802.11 wireless LANs. It works with any wireless network interface controller whose driver supports raw monitoring mode and can sniff 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g traffic.

Burp Suite is a leading range of cybersecurity tools.

Cilium uses eBPF to accelerate getting data in and out of L7 proxies such as Envoy, enabling efficient visibility into API protocols like HTTP, gRPC, and Kafka.

Hubble is a Network, Service & Security Observability for Kubernetes using eBPF.

Istio is an open platform to connect, manage, and secure microservices. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes and Mesos.

Certgen is a convenience tool to generate and store certificates for Hubble Relay mTLS.

Scapy is a python-based interactive packet manipulation program & library.

syzkaller is an unsupervised, coverage-guided kernel fuzzer.

SchedViz is a tool for gathering and visualizing kernel scheduling traces on Linux machines.

oss-fuzz aims to make common open source software more secure and stable by combining modern fuzzing techniques with scalable, distributed execution.

OSSEC is a free, open-source host-based intrusion detection system. It performs log analysis, integrity checking, Windows registry monitoring, rootkit detection, time-based alerting, and active response.

Metasploit Project is a computer security project that provides information about security vulnerabilities and aids in penetration testing and IDS signature development.

Wfuzz was created to facilitate the task in web applications assessments and it is based on a simple concept: it replaces any reference to the FUZZ keyword by the value of a given payload.

Nmap is a security scanner used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, thus building a "map" of the network.

Patchwork is a web-based patch tracking system designed to facilitate the contribution and management of contributions to an open-source project.

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more.

Snort is an open-source, free and lightweight network intrusion detection system (NIDS) software for Linux and Windows to detect emerging threats.

Wireshark is a free and open-source packet analyzer. It is used for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and communications protocol development, and education.

OpenSCAP is U.S. standard maintained by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It provides multiple tools to assist administrators and auditors with assessment, measurement, and enforcement of security baselines. OpenSCAP maintains great flexibility and interoperability by reducing the costs of performing security audits. Whether you want to evaluate DISA STIGs, NIST‘s USGCB, or Red Hat’s Security Response Team’s content, all are supported by OpenSCAP.

Tink is a multi-language, cross-platform, open source library that provides cryptographic APIs that are secure, easy to use correctly, and harder to misuse.

OWASP is an online community, produces freely-available articles, methodologies, documentation, tools, and technologies in the field of web application security.

Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language is a community effort to standardize how to assess and report upon the machine state of computer systems. OVAL includes a language to encode system details, and community repositories of content. Tools and services that use OVAL provide enterprises with accurate, consistent, and actionable information to improve their security.

Networking

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Network Learning Resources

AWS Certified Security - Specialty Certification

Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate

Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer

Cisco Security Certifications

The Red Hat Certified Specialist in Security: Linux

Linux Professional Institute LPIC-3 Enterprise Security Certification

Cybersecurity Training and Courses from IBM Skills

Cybersecurity Courses and Certifications by Offensive Security

Citrix Certified Associate – Networking(CCA-N)

Citrix Certified Professional – Virtualization(CCP-V)

CCNP Routing and Switching

Certified Information Security Manager(CISM)

Wireshark Certified Network Analyst (WCNA)

Juniper Networks Certification Program Enterprise (JNCP)

Networking courses and specializations from Coursera

Network & Security Courses from Udemy

Network & Security Courses from edX

Networking Tools & Concepts

cURL is a computer software project providing a library and command-line tool for transferring data using various network protocols(HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, DICT, TELNET, LDAP LDAPS, MQTT, POP3, POP3S, RTMP, RTMPS, RTSP, SCP, SFTP, SMB, SMBS, SMTP or SMTPS). cURL is also used in cars, television sets, routers, printers, audio equipment, mobile phones, tablets, settop boxes, media players and is the Internet transfer engine for thousands of software applications in over ten billion installations.

cURL Fuzzer is a quality assurance testing for the curl project.

DoH is a stand-alone application for DoH (DNS-over-HTTPS) name resolves and lookups.

HTTPie is a command-line HTTP client. Its goal is to make CLI interaction with web services as human-friendly as possible. HTTPie is designed for testing, debugging, and generally interacting with APIs & HTTP servers.

HTTPStat is a tool that visualizes curl statistics in a simple layout.

Wuzz is an interactive cli tool for HTTP inspection. It can be used to inspect/modify requests copied from the browser's network inspector with the "copy as cURL" feature.

Websocat is a ommand-line client for WebSockets, like netcat (or curl) for ws:// with advanced socat-like functions.

• Connection: In networking, a connection refers to pieces of related information that are transferred through a network. This generally infers that a connection is built before the data transfer (by following the procedures laid out in a protocol) and then is deconstructed at the at the end of the data transfer.

• Packet: A packet is, generally speaking, the most basic unit that is transferred over a network. When communicating over a network, packets are the envelopes that carry your data (in pieces) from one end point to the other.

Packets have a header portion that contains information about the packet including the source and destination, timestamps, network hops. The main portion of a packet contains the actual data being transferred. It is sometimes called the body or the payload.

• Network Interface: A network interface can refer to any kind of software interface to networking hardware. For instance, if you have two network cards in your computer, you can control and configure each network interface associated with them individually.

A network interface may be associated with a physical device, or it may be a representation of a virtual interface. The "loop-back" device, which is a virtual interface to the local machine, is an example of this.

• LAN: LAN stands for "local area network". It refers to a network or a portion of a network that is not publicly accessible to the greater internet. A home or office network is an example of a LAN.

• WAN: WAN stands for "wide area network". It means a network that is much more extensive than a LAN. While WAN is the relevant term to use to describe large, dispersed networks in general, it is usually meant to mean the internet, as a whole.

If an interface is connected to the WAN, it is generally assumed that it is reachable through the internet.

• Protocol: A protocol is a set of rules and standards that basically define a language that devices can use to communicate. There are a great number of protocols in use extensively in networking, and they are often implemented in different layers.

Some low level protocols are TCP, UDP, IP, and ICMP. Some familiar examples of application layer protocols, built on these lower protocols, are HTTP (for accessing web content), SSH, TLS/SSL, and FTP.

• Port: A port is an address on a single machine that can be tied to a specific piece of software. It is not a physical interface or location, but it allows your server to be able to communicate using more than one application.

• Firewall: A firewall is a program that decides whether traffic coming into a server or going out should be allowed. A firewall usually works by creating rules for which type of traffic is acceptable on which ports. Generally, firewalls block ports that are not used by a specific application on a server.

• NAT: Network address translation is a way to translate requests that are incoming into a routing server to the relevant devices or servers that it knows about in the LAN. This is usually implemented in physical LANs as a way to route requests through one IP address to the necessary backend servers.

• VPN: Virtual private network is a means of connecting separate LANs through the internet, while maintaining privacy. This is used as a means of connecting remote systems as if they were on a local network, often for security reasons.

Network Layers

While networking is often discussed in terms of topology in a horizontal way, between hosts, its implementation is layered in a vertical fashion throughout a computer or network. This means is that there are multiple technologies and protocols that are built on top of each other in order for communication to function more easily. Each successive, higher layer abstracts the raw data a little bit more, and makes it simpler to use for applications and users. It also allows you to leverage lower layers in new ways without having to invest the time and energy to develop the protocols and applications that handle those types of traffic.

As data is sent out of one machine, it begins at the top of the stack and filters downwards. At the lowest level, actual transmission to another machine takes place. At this point, the data travels back up through the layers of the other computer. Each layer has the ability to add its own "wrapper" around the data that it receives from the adjacent layer, which will help the layers that come after decide what to do with the data when it is passed off.

One method of talking about the different layers of network communication is the OSI model. OSI stands for Open Systems Interconnect.This model defines seven separate layers. The layers in this model are:

• Application: The application layer is the layer that the users and user-applications most often interact with. Network communication is discussed in terms of availability of resources, partners to communicate with, and data synchronization.

• Presentation: The presentation layer is responsible for mapping resources and creating context. It is used to translate lower level networking data into data that applications expect to see.

• Session: The session layer is a connection handler. It creates, maintains, and destroys connections between nodes in a persistent way.

• Transport: The transport layer is responsible for handing the layers above it a reliable connection. In this context, reliable refers to the ability to verify that a piece of data was received intact at the other end of the connection. This layer can resend information that has been dropped or corrupted and can acknowledge the receipt of data to remote computers.

• Network: The network layer is used to route data between different nodes on the network. It uses addresses to be able to tell which computer to send information to. This layer can also break apart larger messages into smaller chunks to be reassembled on the opposite end.

• Data Link: This layer is implemented as a method of establishing and maintaining reliable links between different nodes or devices on a network using existing physical connections.

• Physical: The physical layer is responsible for handling the actual physical devices that are used to make a connection. This layer involves the bare software that manages physical connections as well as the hardware itself (like Ethernet).

The TCP/IP model, more commonly known as the Internet protocol suite, is another layering model that is simpler and has been widely adopted.It defines the four separate layers, some of which overlap with the OSI model:

• Application: In this model, the application layer is responsible for creating and transmitting user data between applications. The applications can be on remote systems, and should appear to operate as if locally to the end user.

The communication takes place between peers network.

• Transport: The transport layer is responsible for communication between processes. This level of networking utilizes ports to address different services. It can build up unreliable or reliable connections depending on the type of protocol used.

• Internet: The internet layer is used to transport data from node to node in a network. This layer is aware of the endpoints of the connections, but does not worry about the actual connection needed to get from one place to another. IP addresses are defined in this layer as a way of reaching remote systems in an addressable manner.

• Link: The link layer implements the actual topology of the local network that allows the internet layer to present an addressable interface. It establishes connections between neighboring nodes to send data.

Interfaces

Interfaces are networking communication points for your computer. Each interface is associated with a physical or virtual networking device. Typically, your server will have one configurable network interface for each Ethernet or wireless internet card you have. In addition, it will define a virtual network interface called the "loopback" or localhost interface. This is used as an interface to connect applications and processes on a single computer to other applications and processes. You can see this referenced as the "lo" interface in many tools.

Network Protocols

Networking works by piggybacks on a number of different protocols on top of each other. In this way, one piece of data can be transmitted using multiple protocols encapsulated within one another.

Media Access Control(MAC) is a communications protocol that is used to distinguish specific devices. Each device is supposed to get a unique MAC address during the manufacturing process that differentiates it from every other device on the internet. Addressing hardware by the MAC address allows you to reference a device by a unique value even when the software on top may change the name for that specific device during operation. Media access control is one of the only protocols from the link layer that you are likely to interact with on a regular basis.

The IP protocol is one of the fundamental protocols that allow the internet to work. IP addresses are unique on each network and they allow machines to address each other across a network. It is implemented on the internet layer in the IP/TCP model. Networks can be linked together, but traffic must be routed when crossing network boundaries. This protocol assumes an unreliable network and multiple paths to the same destination that it can dynamically change between. There are a number of different implementations of the protocol. The most common implementation today is IPv4, although IPv6 is growing in popularity as an alternative due to the scarcity of IPv4 addresses available and improvements in the protocols capabilities.

ICMP: internet control message protocol is used to send messages between devices to indicate the availability or error conditions. These packets are used in a variety of network diagnostic tools, such as ping and traceroute. Usually ICMP packets are transmitted when a packet of a different kind meets some kind of a problem. Basically, they are used as a feedback mechanism for network communications.

TCP: Transmission control protocol is implemented in the transport layer of the IP/TCP model and is used to establish reliable connections. TCP is one of the protocols that encapsulates data into packets. It then transfers these to the remote end of the connection using the methods available on the lower layers. On the other end, it can check for errors, request certain pieces to be resent, and reassemble the information into one logical piece to send to the application layer. The protocol builds up a connection prior to data transfer using a system called a three-way handshake. This is a way for the two ends of the communication to acknowledge the request and agree upon a method of ensuring data reliability. After the data has been sent, the connection is torn down using a similar four-way handshake. TCP is the protocol of choice for many of the most popular uses for the internet, including WWW, FTP, SSH, and email. It is safe to say that the internet we know today would not be here without TCP.

UDP: User datagram protocol is a popular companion protocol to TCP and is also implemented in the transport layer. The fundamental difference between UDP and TCP is that UDP offers unreliable data transfer. It does not verify that data has been received on the other end of the connection. This might sound like a bad thing, and for many purposes, it is. However, it is also extremely important for some functions. It’s not required to wait for confirmation that the data was received and forced to resend data, UDP is much faster than TCP. It does not establish a connection with the remote host, it simply fires off the data to that host and doesn't care if it is accepted or not. Since UDP is a simple transaction, it is useful for simple communications like querying for network resources. It also doesn't maintain a state, which makes it great for transmitting data from one machine to many real-time clients. This makes it ideal for VOIP, games, and other applications that cannot afford delays.

HTTP: Hypertext transfer protocol is a protocol defined in the application layer that forms the basis for communication on the web. HTTP defines a number of functions that tell the remote system what you are requesting. For instance, GET, POST, and DELETE all interact with the requested data in a different way.

FTP: File transfer protocol is in the application layer and provides a way of transferring complete files from one host to another. It is inherently insecure, so it is not recommended for any externally facing network unless it is implemented as a public, download-only resource.

DNS: Domain name system is an application layer protocol used to provide a human-friendly naming mechanism for internet resources. It is what ties a domain name to an IP address and allows you to access sites by name in your browser.

SSH: Secure shell is an encrypted protocol implemented in the application layer that can be used to communicate with a remote server in a secure way. Many additional technologies are built around this protocol because of its end-to-end encryption and ubiquity. There are many other protocols that we haven't covered that are equally important. However, this should give you a good overview of some of the fundamental technologies that make the internet and networking possible.

JSON Web Token (JWT) is a compact URL-safe means of representing claims to be transferred between two parties. The claims in a JWT are encoded as a JSON object that is digitally signed using JSON Web Signature (JWS).

OAuth 2.0 is an open source authorization framework that enables applications to obtain limited access to user accounts on an HTTP service, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter GitHub, and DigitalOcean. It works by delegating user authentication to the service that hosts the user account, and authorizing third-party applications to access the user account.

Assembly Development

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Assembly Learning Resources

Assembly is a low-level programming language. It uses mnemonic codes and labels to represent machine-level code with each instruction corresponding to just one machine operation.

RISC-V Foundation is a non-profit corporation controlled by its 500 members(NVIDIA, Google, Samsung, Raspberry Pi, SiFive, Canonical, and Western Digital) to drive forward the adoption and implementation of the free and open RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA).

Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer’s Manual

Introduction to x64 Assembly from Intel

x86 Assembly Language Reference Manual for Open Solaris

AMD64 Architecture Programmer’s Manual Volume 1-5

AMD GPU ISA documentation

AMD Developer Guides, Manuals, and ISA Documents

Assembler language from IBM

The Assembler language on z/OS from IBM

MIPS Architecture & Technology from Wave Computing

Assemblies in .NET

Microsoft Macro Assembler reference

Compiler Intrinsics and Assembly Language from Microsoft

x86 and amd64 instruction Reference

Intro to x86 Assembly Language Programming

Learn Assembly Programming courses on Udemy

Assembly Languages and Assemblers courses on Coursera

Intro to Assembly Language from MIT

Assembly Tools & Architectures

Arm Instruction Emulator (ArmIE) is a tool that emulates Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) and SVE2 instructions on AArch64/ARM64 platforms.

FASM (flat assembler) is an assembler for x86 processors that supports Intel-based assembly language on the IA-32 and x86-64 computer architectures.

Microsoft Assembler (MASM) for x64 is Microsoft's assembler that accepts x64 assembler language.

MASM/TASM is a VSCode extension that offers a way to run and debug DOS(80x86) assembly TASM/MASM through DOSBox and msdos-player.

NASM is an asssembler/disassembler for the x86 CPU architecture portable to nearly every modern platform, and with code generation for many platforms old and new.

GAS is the assembler used by the GNU Project for the default back-end of GCC. It is used to assemble the GNU operating system and the Linux kernel.

MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc.. In June 2018 MIPS was Acquired by AI Startup Wave Computing.

LLVM is a library that has collection of modular/reusable compiler and toolchain components (assemblers, compilers, debuggers, etc.). With these components LLVM can be used as a compiler framework, providing a front-end(parser and lexer) and a back-end (code that converts LLVM's representation to actual machine code).

TinyGo is a Go compiler(based on LLVM) intended for use in small places such as microcontrollers, WebAssembly (Wasm), and command-line tools.

Tock is an embedded operating system designed for running multiple concurrent, mutually distrustful applications on Cortex-M and RISC-V based embedded platforms. Tock's design centers around protection, both from potentially malicious applications and from device drivers.

PlatformIO is a professional collaborative platform for embedded development with no vendor lock-in. It provides support for multiplatforms and frameworks such as IoT, Arduino, CMSIS, ESP-IDF, FreeRTOS, libOpenCM3, mbed OS, Pulp OS, SPL, STM32Cube, Zephyr RTOS, ARM, AVR, Espressif (ESP8266/ESP32), FPGA, MCS-51 (8051), MSP430, Nordic (nRF51/nRF52), NXP i.MX RT, PIC32, RISC-V.

PlatformIO for VSCode is a plugin that provides support for the PlatformIO IDE on VSCode.

Keystone is a lightweight multi-platform, multi-architecture(Arm, Arm64, Hexagon, Mips, PowerPC, Sparc, SystemZ & X86) assembler framework.

Unicorn is a lightweight, multi-platform, multi-architecture CPU emulator framework(ARM, AArch64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, X86) based on QEMU.

C/C++ Development

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C/C++ Learning Resources

C++ is a cross-platform language that can be used to build high-performance applications developed by Bjarne Stroustrup, as an extension to the C language.

C is a general-purpose, high-level language that was originally developed by Dennis M. Ritchie to develop the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs. It supports structured programming, lexical variable scope, and recursion, with a static type system. C also provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions, which makes it one was of the most widely used programming languages today.

Embedded C is a set of language extensions for the C programming language by the C Standards Committee to address issues that exist between C extensions for different embedded systems. The extensions hep enhance microprocessor features such as fixed-point arithmetic, multiple distinct memory banks, and basic I/O operations. This makes Embedded C the most popular embedded software language in the world.

C & C++ Developer Tools from JetBrains

Open source C++ libraries on cppreference.com

C++ Graphics libraries

C++ Libraries in MATLAB

C++ Tools and Libraries Articles

Google C++ Style Guide

Introduction C++ Education course on Google Developers

C++ style guide for Fuchsia

C and C++ Coding Style Guide by OpenTitan

Chromium C++ Style Guide

C++ Core Guidelines

C++ Style Guide for ROS

Learn C++

Learn C : An Interactive C Tutorial

C++ Institute

C++ Online Training Courses on LinkedIn Learning

C++ Tutorials on W3Schools

Learn C Programming Online Courses on edX

Learn C++ with Online Courses on edX

Learn C++ on Codecademy

Coding for Everyone: C and C++ course on Coursera

C++ For C Programmers on Coursera

Top C Courses on Coursera

C++ Online Courses on Udemy

Top C Courses on Udemy

C++ For Programmers Course on Udacity

C++ Fundamentals Course on Pluralsight

Introduction to C++ on MIT Free Online Course Materials

Introduction to C++ for Programmers | Harvard

Online C Courses | Harvard University

C/C++ Tools

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft; which is a feature-rich application that can be used for many aspects of software development. Visual Studio makes it easy to edit, debug, build, and publish your app. By using Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and Windows Store.

Visual Studio Code is a code editor redefined and optimized for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications.

Vcpkg is a C++ Library Manager for Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

ReSharper C++ is a Visual Studio Extension for C++ developers developed by JetBrains.

AppCode is constantly monitoring the quality of your code. It warns you of errors and smells and suggests quick-fixes to resolve them automatically. AppCode provides lots of code inspections for Objective-C, Swift, C/C++, and a number of code inspections for other supported languages. All code inspections are run on the fly.

CLion is a cross-platform IDE for C and C++ developers developed by JetBrains.

Code::Blocks is a free C/C++ and Fortran IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable. Built around a plugin framework, Code::Blocks can be extended with plugins.

CppSharp is a tool and set of libraries which facilitates the usage of native C/C++ code with the .NET ecosystem. It consumes C/C++ header and library files and generates the necessary glue code to surface the native API as a managed API. Such an API can be used to consume an existing native library in your managed code or add managed scripting support to a native codebase.

Conan is an Open Source Package Manager for C++ development and dependency management into the 21st century and on par with the other development ecosystems.

High Performance Computing (HPC) SDK is a comprehensive toolbox for GPU accelerating HPC modeling and simulation applications. It includes the C, C++, and Fortran compilers, libraries, and analysis tools necessary for developing HPC applications on the NVIDIA platform.

Thrust is a C++ parallel programming library which resembles the C++ Standard Library. Thrust's high-level interface greatly enhances programmer productivity while enabling performance portability between GPUs and multicore CPUs. Interoperability with established technologies such as CUDA, TBB, and OpenMP integrates with existing software.

Boost is an educational opportunity focused on cutting-edge C++. Boost has been a participant in the annual Google Summer of Code since 2007, in which students develop their skills by working on Boost Library development.

Automake is a tool for automatically generating Makefile.in files compliant with the GNU Coding Standards. Automake requires the use of GNU Autoconf.

Cmake is an open-source, cross-platform family of tools designed to build, test and package software. CMake is used to control the software compilation process using simple platform and compiler independent configuration files, and generate native makefiles and workspaces that can be used in the compiler environment of your choice.

GDB is a debugger, that allows you to see what is going on `inside' another program while it executes or what another program was doing at the moment it crashed.

GCC is a compiler Collection that includes front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for these languages.

GSL is a numerical library for C and C++ programmers. It is free software under the GNU General Public License. The library provides a wide range of mathematical routines such as random number generators, special functions and least-squares fitting. There are over 1000 functions in total with an extensive test suite.

OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library (GLEW) is a cross-platform open-source C/C++ extension loading library. GLEW provides efficient run-time mechanisms for determining which OpenGL extensions are supported on the target platform.

Libtool is a generic library support script that hides the complexity of using shared libraries behind a consistent, portable interface. To use Libtool, add the new generic library building commands to your Makefile, Makefile.in, or Makefile.am.

Maven is a software project management and comprehension tool. Based on the concept of a project object model (POM), Maven can manage a project's build, reporting and documentation from a central piece of information.

TAU (Tuning And Analysis Utilities) is capable of gathering performance information through instrumentation of functions, methods, basic blocks, and statements as well as event-based sampling. All C++ language features are supported including templates and namespaces.

Clang is a production quality C, Objective-C, C++ and Objective-C++ compiler when targeting X86-32, X86-64, and ARM (other targets may have caveats, but are usually easy to fix). Clang is used in production to build performance-critical software like Google Chrome or Firefox.

OpenCV is a highly optimized library with focus on real-time applications. Cross-Platform C++, Python and Java interfaces support Linux, MacOS, Windows, iOS, and Android.

Libcu++ is the NVIDIA C++ Standard Library for your entire system. It provides a heterogeneous implementation of the C++ Standard Library that can be used in and between CPU and GPU code.

ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files. It's widely used to build languages, tools, and frameworks. From a grammar, ANTLR generates a parser that can build parse trees and also generates a listener interface that makes it easy to respond to the recognition of phrases of interest.

Oat++ is a light and powerful C++ web framework for highly scalable and resource-efficient web application. It's zero-dependency and easy-portable.

JavaCPP is a program that provides efficient access to native C++ inside Java, not unlike the way some C/C++ compilers interact with assembly language.

Cython is a language that makes writing C extensions for Python as easy as Python itself. Cython is based on Pyrex, but supports more cutting edge functionality and optimizations such as calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes.

Spdlog is a very fast, header-only/compiled, C++ logging library.

Infer is a static analysis tool for Java, C++, Objective-C, and C. Infer is written in OCaml.

C# Development

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C# Learning Resources

C# is a modern and object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft to write any application using the C# programming language on the .NET platform.

Taking your first steps with C#

Learning C#

C# development with Visual Studio

C# programming with Visual Studio Code

Working with data in C#

C# Tutorial by W3Schools

Windows Forms for .NET 5 and .NET Core 3.1

Xamarin documentation

Advanced Topics in C# by Udemy

The complete C# tutorial

Unity C# Survival Guide

RabbitMQ .NET/C# Client API

Tools

Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime.

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft; which is a feature-rich application that can be used for many aspects of software development. Visual Studio makes it easy to edit, debug, build, and publish your app. By using Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and Windows Store.

MSBuild is the build platform for .NET and Visual Studio. MSBuild, provides an XML schema for a project file that controls how the build platform processes and builds software. Visual Studio uses MSBuild to perform team builds through Azure DevOps Server, but MSBuild can run without Visual Studio.

Roslyn is a .NET compiler developed by Microsoft that provides C# and Visual Basic languages with rich code analysis APIs.

Bot Framework is a framework developed by Microsoft that provides the most comprehensive experience for building conversation applications. Developers can model and build sophisticated conversation using their favorite programming languages including C#, JS, Python and Java or using Bot Framework Composer, an open-source, visual authoring canvas for developers and multi-disciplinary teams to design and build conversational experiences with Language.

Uno Platform is a Universal Windows Platform Bridge that allows UWP-based code (C# and XAML) to run on iOS, Android, macOS, WebAssembly, Linux and Windows 7. It provides the full definitions of the UWP Windows 10 2004 (19041), and the implementation of a growing number of parts of the UWP API, such as Windows.UI.Xaml, to enable UWP and WinUI applications to run on these platforms.

Rider is a fast and powerful, cross-platform .NET IDE devloped by JetBrains to develop .NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core, Xamarin; or Unity applications for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Resharper is a Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers that has On-the-fly code quality analysis for C#, VB.NET, XAML, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, and XML. Letting you know right away if your code needs to be improved.

dotPeek is a tool developed by JetBrains based on ReSharper's bundled decompiler. It can reliably decompile any .NET assembly into equivalent C# or CIL code.

dotTrace is an .NET performance Profiler developed by Jet Brains. It helps users locate performance bottlenecks in a variety of .NET applications: desktop applications, .NET Core, ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core applications hosted on IIS or IIS Express web servers, Silverlight, WCF services, Windows services, Universal Windows Platform applications, and unit tests.

dotMemory is an .NET memory Profiler developed by Jet Brains. It allows the user to analyze memory usage in a variety of .NET and .NET Core applications: desktop applications, Windows services, ASP.NET web applications, IIS, IIS Express, arbitrary .NET processes, and more.

dotCover is an .NET unit test runner and code coverage tool developed by Jet Brains. It helps the user figure out on-the-fly which unit tests are affected by your latest code changes, and automatically re-runs the affected tests for you. The continuous testing mode can be switched on for any unit test session.

Json.NET is a popular high-performance JSON framework for .NET.

Quasar is a fast and light-weight remote administration tool coded in C#. The usage ranges from user support through day-to-day administrative work to employee monitoring. Providing high stability and an easy-to-use user interface, Quasar is the perfect remote administration solution for you.

CodeMaid is an open source Visual Studio extension to cleanup and simplify our C#, C++, F#, VB, PHP, PowerShell, JSON, XAML, XML, ASP, HTML, CSS, LESS, SCSS, JavaScript and TypeScript coding.

.NET Fiddle is an advanced online compiler for C# that allows you to create, run and share your code online.

Octopus Deploy is a single place for your team to manage releases, automate deployments, and automate the runbooks that keeps your software operating.

Appveyor is a cloud-based continuous integration system that integrates natively with your source control and allows CI configuration files to live alongside your projects.

AppHarbor is a .NET Platform-as-a-Service that let's developers deploy and scale any standard .NET application to the cloud.

ANTLR (ANother Tool for Language Recognition) is a powerful parser generator for reading, processing, executing, or translating structured text or binary files. It's widely used to build languages, tools, and frameworks. From a grammar, ANTLR generates a parser that can build parse trees and also generates a listener interface that makes it easy to respond to the recognition of phrases of interest.

AutoRest is a tool generates client libraries for accessing RESTful web services using the OpenAPI Specification format. It Supports C#, PowerShell, Go, Java, Node.js, TypeScript, Python, Ruby.

Markdig is a fast, powerful, CommonMark compliant, extensible Markdown processor for .NET.

.NET Development

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.NET Learning Resources

.NET is a developer platform with tools and libraries for building any type of app, including web, mobile, desktop, games, IoT, cloud, and microservices.

.NET documentation

Getting started with .NET

.NET Application Architecture Guide

Intro .NET Guide by JetBrains

C# documentation write any application using the C# programming language on the .NET platform.

Tools

.NET Core is a cross-platform .NET implementation for websites, servers, and console apps on Windows, Linux, and macOS.The .NET Framework supports websites, services, desktop apps, and more on Windows. Xamarin/Mono is a .NET implementation for running apps on all the major mobile operating systems.

.NET runtime is a collection of libraries and shared host (dotnet) installers for all supported platforms, as well as the sources to .NET runtime and libraries.

ASP.NET Core is a cross-platform .NET framework for building modern cloud-based web applications on Windows, Mac, or Linux.

Mono is a software platform designed to allow developers to easily create cross platform applications. It is an open source implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Runtime.

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft; which is a feature-rich application that can be used for many aspects of software development. Visual Studio makes it easy to edit, debug, build, and publish your app. By using Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation, and Windows Store.

Rider is a fast and powerful, cross-platform .NET IDE devloped by JetBrains to develop .NET, ASP.NET, .NET Core, Xamarin; or Unity applications for Windows, Mac, Linux.

Resharper is a Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers that has On-the-fly code quality analysis for C#, VB.NET, XAML, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, and XML. Letting you know right away if your code needs to be improved.

dotTrace is an .NET performance Profiler developed by Jet Brains. It helps users locate performance bottlenecks in a variety of .NET applications: desktop applications, .NET Core, ASP.NET, ASP.NET Core applications hosted on IIS or IIS Express web servers, Silverlight, WCF services, Windows services, Universal Windows Platform applications, and unit tests.

dotMemory is an .NET memory Profiler developed by Jet Brains. It allows the user to analyze memory usage in a variety of .NET and .NET Core applications: desktop applications, Windows services, ASP.NET web applications, IIS, IIS Express, arbitrary .NET processes, and more.

dotCover is an .NET unit test runner and code coverage tool developed by Jet Brains. It helps the user figure out on-the-fly which unit tests are affected by your latest code changes, and automatically re-runs the affected tests for you. The continuous testing mode can be switched on for any unit test session.

Avalonia is a cross-platform XAML-based UI framework providing a flexible styling system and supporting a wide range of Operating Systems such as Windows via .NET Framework and .NET Core, Linux via Xorg, macOS.

Polly is a .NET resilience and transient-fault-handling library that allows developers to express policies such as Retry, Circuit Breaker, Timeout, Bulkhead Isolation, and Fallback in a fluent and thread-safe manner.

IdentityServer is a free, open source OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 framework for ASP.NET Core. IdentityServer4 incorporates all the protocol implementations and extensibility points needed to integrate token-based authentication, single-sign-on and API access control in your applications.

ILSpy is the open-source .NET assembly browser and decompiler.

Hangfire is an easy way to perform background job processing in your .NET and .NET Core applications with no Windows Service or Task Scheduler required.

React Native Windows is a ramework for building native Windows apps with React. React Native is a framework developed by Facebook that enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React.

ReactiveUI is a composable, cross-platform model-view-viewmodel framework for all .NET platforms that is inspired by functional reactive programming, which is a paradigm that allows you to abstract mutable state away from your user interfaces and express the idea around a feature in one readable place and improve the testability of your application.

Refit is the automatic type-safe REST library for .NET Core, Xamarin and .NET.It's heavily inspired by Square's Retrofit library, Refit turns your REST API into a live interface.

MAUI is the .NET Multi-platform App UI, a framework for building native device applications spanning mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Quasar is a fast and light-weight remote administration tool coded in C#. The usage ranges from user support through day-to-day administrative work to employee monitoring. Providing high stability and an easy-to-use user interface, Quasar is the perfect remote administration solution for you.

Python Development

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Python Learning Resources

Python is an interpreted, high-level programming language. Python is used heavily in the fields of Data Science and Machine Learning.

Python Developer’s Guide is a comprehensive resource for contributing to Python – for both new and experienced contributors. It is maintained by the same community that maintains Python.

Azure Functions Python developer guide is an introduction to developing Azure Functions using Python. The content below assumes that you've already read the Azure Functions developers guide.

CheckiO is a programming learning platform and a gamified website that teaches Python through solving code challenges and competing for the most elegant and creative solutions.

Python Institute

PCEP – Certified Entry-Level Python Programmer certification

PCAP – Certified Associate in Python Programming certification

PCPP – Certified Professional in Python Programming 1 certification

PCPP – Certified Professional in Python Programming 2

MTA: Introduction to Programming Using Python Certification

Getting Started with Python in Visual Studio Code

Google's Python Style Guide

Google's Python Education Class

Real Python

The Python Open Source Computer Science Degree by Forrest Knight

Intro to Python for Data Science

Intro to Python by W3schools

Codecademy's Python 3 course

Learn Python with Online Courses and Classes from edX

Python Courses Online from Coursera

Python Frameworks and Tools

Python Package Index (PyPI) is a repository of software for the Python programming language. PyPI helps you find and install software developed and shared by the Python community.

PyCharm is the best IDE I've ever used. With PyCharm, you can access the command line, connect to a database, create a virtual environment, and manage your version control system all in one place, saving time by avoiding constantly switching between windows.

Python Tools for Visual Studio(PTVS) is a free, open source plugin that turns Visual Studio into a Python IDE. It supports editing, browsing, IntelliSense, mixed Python/C++ debugging, remote Linux/MacOS debugging, profiling, IPython, and web development with Django and other frameworks.

Pylance is an extension that works alongside Python in Visual Studio Code to provide performant language support. Under the hood, Pylance is powered by Pyright, Microsoft's static type checking tool.

Pyright is a fast type checker meant for large Python source bases. It can run in a “watch” mode and performs fast incremental updates when files are modified.

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.

Flask is a micro web framework written in Python. It is classified as a microframework because it does not require particular tools or libraries.

Web2py is an open-source web application framework written in Python allowing allows web developers to program dynamic web content. One web2py instance can run multiple web sites using different databases.

AWS Chalice is a framework for writing serverless apps in python. It allows you to quickly create and deploy applications that use AWS Lambda.

Tornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library. Tornado uses a non-blocking network I/O, which can scale to tens of thousands of open connections.

HTTPie is a command line HTTP client that makes CLI interaction with web services as easy as possible. HTTPie is designed for testing, debugging, and generally interacting with APIs & HTTP servers.

Scrapy is a fast high-level web crawling and web scraping framework, used to crawl websites and extract structured data from their pages. It can be used for a wide range of purposes, from data mining to monitoring and automated testing.

Sentry is a service that helps you monitor and fix crashes in realtime. The server is in Python, but it contains a full API for sending events from any language, in any application.

Pipenv is a tool that aims to bring the best of all packaging worlds (bundler, composer, npm, cargo, yarn, etc.) to the Python world.

Python Fire is a library for automatically generating command line interfaces (CLIs) from absolutely any Python object.

Bottle is a fast, simple and lightweight WSGI micro web-framework for Python. It is distributed as a single file module and has no dependencies other than the Python Standard Library.

CherryPy is a minimalist Python object-oriented HTTP web framework.

Sanic is a Python 3.6+ web server and web framework that's written to go fast.

Pyramid is a small and fast open source Python web framework. It makes real-world web application development and deployment more fun and more productive.

TurboGears is a hybrid web framework able to act both as a Full Stack framework or as a Microframework.

Falcon is a reliable, high-performance Python web framework for building large-scale app backends and microservices with support for MongoDB, Pluggable Applications and autogenerated Admin.

Neural Network Intelligence(NNI) is an open source AutoML toolkit for automate machine learning lifecycle, including Feature Engineering, Neural Architecture Search, Model Compression and Hyperparameter Tuning.

Dash is a popular Python framework for building ML & data science web apps for Python, R, Julia, and Jupyter.

Luigi is a Python module that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs. It handles dependency resolution, workflow management, visualization etc. It also comes with Hadoop support built-in.

Locust is an easy to use, scriptable and scalable performance testing tool.

spaCy is a library for advanced Natural Language Processing in Python and Cython.

NumPy is the fundamental package needed for scientific computing with Python.

Pillow is a friendly PIL(Python Imaging Library) fork.

IPython is a command shell for interactive computing in multiple programming languages, originally developed for the Python programming language, that offers enhanced introspection, rich media, additional shell syntax, tab completion, and rich history.

GraphLab Create is a Python library, backed by a C++ engine, for quickly building large-scale, high-performance machine learning models.

Pandas is a fast, powerful, and easy to use open source data structrures, data analysis and manipulation tool, built on top of the Python programming language.

PuLP is an Linear Programming modeler written in python. PuLP can generate LP files and call on use highly optimized solvers, GLPK, COIN CLP/CBC, CPLEX, and GUROBI, to solve these linear problems.

Matplotlib is a 2D plotting library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python. Matplotlib produces publication-quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and interactive environments across platforms.

Scikit-Learn is a simple and efficient tool for data mining and data analysis. It is built on NumPy,SciPy, and mathplotlib.

Rust Development

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Rust Learning Resources

Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language focused on performance and safety. Rust has a comparable amount of runtime to C and C++, and has set up its standard library to be amenable towards OS development. Specifically, the standard library is split into two parts: core and std. Core is the lowest-level aspects only, and doesn't include things like allocation, threading, and other higher-level features.

The Rust Language Reference

The Rust Programming Language Book

Learning Rust

Why AWS loves Rust

Rust Programming courses on Udemy

Safety in Systems Programming with Rust at Standford by Ryan Eberhardt

WebAssembly meets Kubernetes with Krustlet using Rust

Microsoft's Project Verona

Rust Tools

Cargo is a package manager that downloads your Rust project’s dependencies and compiles your project.

Crater is a tool to run experiments across parts of the Rust ecosystem. Its primary purpose is to detect regressions in the Rust compiler, and it does this by building a large number of crates, running their test suites and comparing the results between two versions of the Rust compiler. It can operate locally (with Docker as the only dependency) or distributed on the cloud. It can operate locally (with Docker as the only dependency) or distributed on the cloud.

VSCode-Rust is plugin that adds language support for Rust to Visual Studio Code. Rust support is powered by a separate language server - either by the official Rust Language Server (RLS) or rust-analyzer, depending on the user's preference. If you don't have it installed, the extension will install it for you (with permission). This extension is built and maintained by the Rust IDEs and editors team with the focus on providing a stable, high quality extension that makes the best use of the respective language server.

Apache Arrow is a development platform for in-memory analytics. It contains a set of technologies that enable big data systems to process and move data fast. Arrow's libraries are available for C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, MATLAB, Python, R, Ruby, and Rust.

Wasmer enables super lightweight containers based on WebAssembly that can run anywhere such as the Desktop to the Cloud and IoT devices, and also embedded in any programming language.

Firecracker is an open source virtualization technology that is purpose-built for creating and managing secure, multi-tenant container and function-based services that provide serverless operational models. Firecracker runs workloads in lightweight virtual machines, called microVMs, which combine the security and isolation properties provided by hardware virtualization technology with the speed and flexibility of containers. Firecracker has also been integrated in container runtimes, for example Kata Containers and Weaveworks Ignite.

Tokio is an event-driven, non-blocking I/O platform for writing asynchronous applications with the Rust programming language.

TiKV is an open-source distributed transactional key-value database that also provides classical key-vlue APIs, but also transactional APIs with ACID compliance.

Sonic is a fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend similar to Elasticsearch in some use-cases.

Hyper is a fast and correct HTTP library for Rust.

Rocket is an async web framework for Rust with a focus on usability, security, extensibility, and speed.

Clippy is a collection of lints to catch common mistakes and improve your Rust code.

Servo is a prototype web browser engine written in the Rust language.

Vector is a high-performance, end-to-end (agent & aggregator) observability data platform that puts the user in control of their observability data.

RustPython is a Python Interpreter written in Rust.

Miri is an interpreter for Rust's mid-level intermediate representation. It can run binaries and test suites of cargo projects and detect certain classes of undefined behavior. Miri will alsowill also tell you about memory leaks: when there is memory still allocated at the end of the execution, and that memory is not reachable from a global static, Miri will raise an error.

Chalk is an implementation and definition of the Rust trait system using a PROLOG-like logic solver.

stdarch is Rust's standard library vendor-specific APIs and run-time feature detection.

Simpleinfra is rep that contains the tools and automation written by the Rust infrastructure team to manage our services. Using some of the tools in this repo require privileges only infra team members have.

Rustlings is a small set of exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code.

Krustlet acts as a Kubernetes Kubelet(written in Rust) by listening on the event stream for new pods that the scheduler assigns to it based on specific Kubernetes tolerations. The project is currently experimental.

Operating System

Redox is a Unix-like Operating System written in Rust, aiming to bring the innovations of Rust to a modern microkernel and full set of applications. Acitvely being developed by Jeremy Soeller.

Bottlerocket OS is an open-source Linux-based operating system meant for hosting containers. Bottlerocket focuses on security and maintainability, providing a reliable, consistent, and safe platform for container-based workloads.

Tock is an embedded operating system designed for running multiple concurrent, mutually distrustful applications on Cortex-M and RISC-V based embedded platforms. Tock's design centers around protection, both from potentially malicious applications and from device drivers. Tock uses two mechanisms to protect different components of the operating system. First, the kernel and device drivers are written in Rust, a systems programming language that provides compile-time memory safety, type safety and strict aliasing. Tock uses Rust to protect the kernel (the scheduler and hardware abstraction layer) from platform specific device drivers as well as isolate device drivers from each other. Second, Tock uses memory protection units to isolate applications from each other and the kernel.

Rust on Chrome OS is a document that provides information on creating Rust projects for installation within Chrome OS and Chrome OS SDK.

Writing an OS in Rust is a blog series creates a small operating system in the Rust programming language by Philipp Oppermann.

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