system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do modern day 'hackers' learn to do what they do best?

It seems everywhere I go you can see news clips about someone who has 'hacked' into a major system or found a new way past some firewall. I know it's not as it's depicted in movies, and programming language is an important pre-requisite, yet nowhere i look can you find a starting point or decent program for someone interested in doing it. 

EDIT: Thank you for all of the replies, i appreciate it. Now I've been surfing around some threads and what not, lo and behold i'm learning something bout programming.
gpt
How do they learn? Trial and error and spending a lot of time analyzing even the most asinine elements. Looking at what others have built and seeing "patterns" hacking is basically software engineering but in reverse.  So really ANY software class/textbook is a good place to start.