What is Cygwin and why do we need it?

Cygwin is an environment that can be run on windows machines allowing Unix like commands and programs to be run. In particular, Cygwin is utilised to run the GNU Compiler Collection - used to compile c and c++ programs. You could also use Microsoft's take on the C++ language and use Microsoft Visual++. But why you'd do that, I have no idea.

Cygwin is available in an executable binary for Windows at http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe. 

If you are attempting to use the GNU Compiler, you must select the development package 'devel'  when installing. Or you can re-run the installer again to download the devel package. Otherwise all your g++compile  and make commands will fail miserably!

So why do we need cygwin and the CNU c/c++ compiling tools? Well, in theory you don't need them at all. You can spend the rest of your time using somebody else's scripts that you don't really understand to hack phpBB2 forums. Hell, you might even get your name on the index page. That'd be good to show the buddies, huh?

Or you could grow up, quit being a dumb script kiddie repeating mantra like commands found on the world wide web and actually learn to program. Without knowing some programming languages such as  c/c++, php, javascript, java, jsp and without knowing how the web actually operates, you'll eventually grow tired of seeing your name on index pages and realise you actually don't know diddly squat.

Why C / C++ ? Mostlly because their well established and there is tons of code samples around. You could use java, or python too. The point is you can't really spend the rest of your life hacking using php or asp. To actually go places you're going to have to descend from the nice http environment into shells and some custom code that you've spend many weekends refining.

Cygwin is one of those essential programs you need to do this. If you're on Linux, well just open a  terminal window! For windows, you need cygwin, just as much as you need packet sniffers, exploits and network probing tools.