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# Resources

Helpful resources for learning more about Urbit

As a distributed and decentralized network, there is no single source of truth for information about urbit (aside from reading the source code, perhaps). But this should be a helpful starting point for documentation, tutorials, community groups, and other resources to help you get the most out of Urbit.

## Documentation for self-hosting urbit

The top guides for learning how to run your own urbit node

These are a few of the top resources for getting started running your own instance of Urbit OS:
- [Get started locally](https://docs.urbit.org/get-on-urbit): Includes guidance for how to run with a free comet identity.
- [Groundseg](https://manual.groundseg.app/): Get started with Native Planet's urbit ship orchestration GUI.
- [Cloud hosting guide](https://docs.urbit.org/user-manual/running/cloud-hosting): Step-by-Step instructions to run in Digital Ocean, Hetzner, or Oracle clouds.

### References

- [Cloud hosting](https://docs.urbit.org/user-manual/running/cloud-hosting) — Technical docs for running urbit in a cloud server
- [Groundseg Guide](https://manual.groundseg.app/) — The user manual for running urbit using Groundseg, from Native Planet

## Urbit Systems Technical Journal

Placeholder description

The Urbit Systems Technical Journal (USTJ) publishes articles on the ongoing development of Urbit and on solid-state computing more generally. Like the famous Bell Labs Technical Journal on which it is modeled, the Urbit Systems Technical Journal aims to document the engineering work necessary to realize the vision of computing as sovereign, deterministic, and grounded on solid first principles.

In so doing, the USTJ hopes that these technical problems come to interest and benefit the broader developer community. Functional (as in programming) engineers are often on the leading edge of software development, and the solutions they undertake have required large-scale innovations in the field of computer science generally.

The Urbit community is currently engaged in such endeavors, such as the Neo Urbit project to increase data storage and execution speed of Urbit's low-level interpreted language Nock. USTJ showcases advancements in dynamic linking, floating-point calculation, and memory management systems. The USTJ editors welcomes submissions from those engaged in making computing more solid-state; if you wish to contribute a technical article, please reach out to `~lagrev-nocfep`.

### References

- [urbitsystems.tech](https://urbitsystems.tech) — The official site of the Urbit Systems Technical Journal

## Learn To Hoon

Hoon is Urbit's high-level, statically-typed, purely-functional programming language

Urbit's nature as a full rewrite of the networked computing stack and functional operating system also means that it has it's own functional programming language, Hoon. Often described as the synonym, `Assembly:C::Nock:Hoon`, Hoon is designed as a human readable systems programming language. 

While some consider it's 'runic' syntax too esoteric, many Urbit contributors learned Hoon as their first programming language, and it may be fair to consider it an infohazard as there are many people who, after writing lots of Hoon, proceed to refuse to write JavaScript ever again.

Materials are available in various formats, including a [video lecture series](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAvwkdfME3E&list=PLYGEMSwLguIEivFINNsHIsi0AbieRZIdk&index=8), [a written Hoon School curriculum](https://docs.urbit.org/build-on-urbit/hoon-school), and [extensive technical documentation](https://docs.urbit.org/hoon/why-hoon). 

You are also invited to [read the source](https://github.com/urbit/urbit/blob/master/pkg/arvo/sys/hoon.hoon), to understand how Hoon builds itself up from raw Nock.

### References

- [Hoon School](https://docs.urbit.org/build-on-urbit/hoon-school) — Learn hoon without assuming you have an extensive programming background

### Next step

- [Start Hoon School](https://docs.urbit.org/build-on-urbit/hoon-school) — Learn to write Hoon

## Urbit-related blogs

A collection of written urbit content from the broader community

The ideas of urbit, from a clean-slate OS and network to self-sovereign digital identity and overlay systems, have sparked the interests of people around the world. And many have published their related thoughts and ideas. If you find yourself curious or yearning for more insights into the Urbit project, we recommend you give them a read:

- [subject.network](https://subject.network/blog)
- [~sarlev's blog](https://sarlev-sarsen.rooftopdao.io/blog)
- [Martian Computing](https://martiancomputing.substack.com)
- [the %hawk blog](https://hawk.computer/~~/misc/)

Or if you are really yearning for content, check out the [Urmanac](https://www.urmanac.com/wiki/~/p/~bordex-ripdur/urmanac/), an almanac of all things Urbit, focused on the history of apps on urbit.