I am currently studying IT at college (UK college aka not University) and the coursework is boring me to death. I have been coding for quite a while now mainly in OO languages such as C# and Java but often get bored and give up quickly because the majority of it is boring UI stuff I hate doing, the projects I come up with rarely have much to do with code design and actually creating algorithms. I want to start writing my own algorithms of sorts and start moving away from the user friendliness side and start learning things that interest me, namely cryptography and compression. I want to write my own encryption algorithm, to encrypt the bytes of a file or string. I have a few questions:
- Where would I start with this, What books/materials are recommended
for starting with cryptography? - Do I need extensive cryptography knowledge to get started on a basic
algorithm? - Will C# be OK for putting an encryption algorithm into practice?
Any help would be sincerely appreciated. I want to start writing code so when it comes to applying to uni, I have something to show for all of my bold claims on my application!