Bitcoin Core Devs Reach Out to Coders With Month-Long Coding Classes

 Chaincode Labs developers Alex Morcos and Suhas Daftuar, and Blockstream developer Matt Corallo — three regular Bitcoin Core  contributors ― are to organise a month-long Bitcoin coding class at the  Chaincode Labs offices in NY commencing September 12. During this  “Bitcoin Hacker Residency,” they will aid and mentor about half a  dozen developers,at the goal of enabling them to contribute to  Bitcoin on a protocol-level or to related projects such as FIBRE or the Lightning Network.

Bitcoin’s  development community, and in particular the part of it that focuses on  low-level protocol improvement, consists of a relatively small group of  developers. Most of them work on Bitcoin Core, and they joined the  project roughly between 2011 and 2013. Since then, not much newcomers  have started contributing — with Morcos and Daftuar as some notable  exceptions. Along with Corallo, they believe this is likely in part  because the learning curve to contribute meaningfully has become quite  steep.

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, Corallo explained:

“I  think there is a lot of understandable feelings of not wanting to  contribute to Bitcoin Core and protocol-level development because  'nothing in Bitcoin is new again.’ When you come into Bitcoin as a  developer, you're gonna first suggest the same 100 changes everyone else  did the first year. And it doesn't usually feel great to be constantly  told your ideas are not useful — especially when you're communicating  over text, and you don’t see that people are trying to help. You just  see a bunch of people who keep telling you you're wrong.”

The  hacker residency is intended for established developers, preferably with  experience in Bitcoin-related projects, who are not on a protocol-level  competency yet. Corallo believes the month-long coding class should  allow these developers to cross the gap and be able to contribute  meaningfully to Bitcoin Core or related projects, if they want to.

“There  are a ton of Bitcoin developers who have never contributed to Bitcoin  Core, or to low protocol development — lots of them because they feel  ill-equipped to do so — for instance because the idea of going through  rigorous review like we have to do sounds really daunting. So we're  looking for those people to really learn how that works, and come to  think about the issues that Bitcoin Core developers focus all day on,”Corallo said.

The hacker residency will have a hands-on approach,  where participating developers mostly learn by doing. The goal is to put  developers in a supportive environment where they can contribute to  Bitcoin Core or other Bitcoin-related projects, with people around to  help them where necessary. Additionally, there will be a few talks about  Bitcoin's design elements and ways to think about Bitcoin protocol  engineering.

The hacker residency should not be considered a  recruitment scheme, however; the class is offered entirely on a  no-strings-attached basis. Participating in the hacker residency is  free, but availability is limited. Developers interested in joining can  apply by sending an overview of their background as well as some ideas  of Bitcoin projects they find exciting to [email protected].