Has anyone here successfully programmed their own bot after reading this?
I just want to gauge how hard it really is.
G00B3R
it's very hard if you want to do it right. it all depends on what level of functionality/reliability that you want to achieve. sure just about anyone can slap something together with a webbrowser control but it will won't hold a candle to a piece of software, similar in concept, that uses the sockets namespace. of course there are many shades in between, so once you identify that you have a base for how challenging your implementation will be.
i read through all the ebooks in this pack yesterday. i guess if you have absolutely no idea what you're doing they could be helpful but really if you want to build a powerful/reliable bot there are a lot more details that go in to it.
the examples in the c# pdf leverage HTTPWebRequest for the most part, this is a good middle of the road functionality to begin with. it will teach you some of the basic concepts of dealing with website interaction such as page parsing, without having to worry about a lot of the craziness associated with doing a custom HTTP class implementation.
that being said i don't advocate the use of HTTPWebRequest for any serious bot building. while it provides a good starting point to understand the concepts involved it is clunky to work with, a pig as far as memory goes in relation to other options, and not nearly as solid/reliable as it should be.
the book in the "read first" zip dedicated to php and curl made me chuckle. i've known for a while a while, but never fully understand why, people build bots in php. seeing the code examples in that pdf suggest to me that using a scripting language to create something like a bot is really just making it harder on yourself in many ways.
what it all comes down to is how good you want your program to be. most of my time developing a bot is spent researching, testing, debugging, and fine tuning the interaction of all the connected code systems. actually writing the code generally takes a good bit less time than that. maybe a little erroneous because it could be argued that those are multiple steps as opposed to a single step but in my opinion the architecture and engineering aspects of putting together a program are as, if not more important than most of the sub level code.
another point to keep in mind is that every method is different and requires its own specific nuances to make it successful. i would think about these books as more of a "Bots 101" than anything else. so while i wouldn't ignore what they have to say, i would take them with a grain of salt and the knowledge that there are better techniques out there.