I'm in the finals of a Swedish junior cybersecurity championship

Created: 2025-04-05, never modified since

This post was meant to be posted a month ago, in the beginning of March 2025, but here you go:

(psst, we came dead last place (19:th place), probably because of the reasons I go through in this article)

What's SakerhetsSM?

A month ago I participated in SakerhetsSM[1], a CTF competition (hacking competition) for Swedish gymnasium[2] students. Then in a week from now, the finals are going to be held where the top 20 teams get to participate.

This year there were around 60 teams, (only counting teams actively participating, and were gymnasium students). The finals will be hosted in Stockholms technological university KTH[3] which is sick. And another cool thing is that the Swedish military pays for it all lmao.

I'm grateful

As in the title, me together with two other guys, are going to be in the finals. Which is pretty cool ngl. I've spent more than half of my life (I'm 16,75 years old) being interested in computer science. I'm completely self taught, and I've gotten my way here. I'm very grateful for that.

Competitions doesn't fuel me

I don't enjoy competitions. It's not what gets me motivated to become better. I have actually no incentive to win this competition. I'm only playing because it's fun playing *together*, and that's good enough for me.

I have ADHD and autism. My driving force comes from the inside; I do the stuff I think is fun and hyperfocus on that. That's the answer to both why and how I've spent half my life on this hobby.

Actually I don't have a force to become better. I only have a force to continue to do what I love.

I'm going to be a maths professor

Over the past year, I've become obsessed with maths. A fuck ton of math. Many days, I go without even touching `nvim` anymore. Instead I'm just experimenting with maths.

At this point, I feel like the same autistic force that have led me into pursuing computer science, is pulling me into math. I'm even starting to experiment and learn exactly like I do with computer.

Learn by doing, to the extreme

(This section should be a post in and of itself. I'll add it to my todo.)

How I've learnt all of this computer science stuff is a simple method really. It'll all make sense in an example, I hope.

Example: Me learning Haskell

1. Search YouTube "haskell tutorial".

2. Watch for 5 minutes, start skipping forward, ADHD kicks in, and get bored.

3. Install the Haskell toolchain.

4. Begin writing your next mega project in Haskell.

5. Search "how to make HTTP request in hs".

6. Begin a new side project where you experiment with the thing you learned.

7. Search "what is a monad in hs".

8. Continue experimentation.

9. Search "main :: IO () in hs".

10. Continue experimentation.

11. Search "parent kill child with fork in hs".

12. Continue experimentation.

...

90. Start over from point 5 but this time with another feature.

This method is so very not effective for it's use of time, but it's very thorough. It's like learning a new language without any supervised training, similar to how babies learn. It involves spending so many hours not understanding a shit and banging your head against the wall. But do it enough times, and you'll not only have learned all knowledge that exists about Haskell, but also the entire mathematical theory behind the underlying Lambda Calculus.

I've only recently understood that this is not how most people learn.

My guess to why is both hyperfocus and the cheer autistic force that keep me going, even when I feel the most hatered and hostility towards everything. I do very much feel that sometimes, especially when I'm stuck on a problem for days.

And oh, that mega project you started with will never be completed. Just forget it. But you learnt Haskell instead, so that's good at least.

Refs

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Authors:

- ludv

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