Best Major or Classes to take to be involved in the lightning/bitcoin community?
1087 sats \ 42 comments \ @creampuff 12 Oct 2022 bitcoin
Hi guys, I've been having an amazing time interacting with the SN community in the last few months (this is an alt account). Currently Looking to settle on a major in university rn and wanted to know what you guys think would be the best path to go down to develop for lightning net/bitcoin core. I'm lucky that my school offers a Blockchain/fintech engineering path for CS but was wondering if that really is the way to go. Would my time be better spent focusing on information security or database engineering? I know I probably sound like a noob asking these questions but if you guys have any useful experience or particular resources/classes that helped you in your journey I would love to hear it! Thanks Everyone, I love this community ❤️
Things I have really enjoyed so far:
  • Mastering the Lightning Network by Andreas Antonopoulos
  • Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper
  • DarthCoin's Umbrel tutorial (he says it's out of date now but it is so much fun to run a node for yourself)
  • Bitcoin Audible Anything Guy Swann reads I hoover up
  • Unenumerated (I try to read one of Nick's posts a week and they blow my mind every single time)
  • Dergigi (helped me reframe my fiat POV of the world)
write
preview
related posts
2046 sats \ 12 replies \ @User21000000 12 Oct 2022
Have you done all the bitcoin books 📚
reply
0 sats \ 11 replies \ @creampuff OP 12 Oct 2022
Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos Mastering the Lightning Network by Andreas Antonopoulos Digital Gold by Nathaniel Popper Fiat Standard Bitcoin Standard Mastering Bitcoin for Starters The Age of Cryptocurrency Bitcoin Billionaires by Ben Mezrich The book of Satoshi Cryptonomicon? Is my book reading list so far (kinda new to Btc). Would love any suggestions of favorites
reply
5005 sats \ 5 replies \ @User21000000 12 Oct 2022
Bullish case for bitcoin The seventh property Bitcoin hard money you can’t fuck with
reply
0 sats \ 4 replies \ @creampuff OP 12 Oct 2022
Ty adding these to the reading list. Thanks!
reply
1000 sats \ 3 replies \ @nullama 12 Oct 2022
You might want to also add this one:
The White Paper
It's a nice way to actually read the white paper itself in book form.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
thanks
reply
0 sats \ 1 reply \ @User21000000 13 Oct 2022
Have you got this ? Is it made well? Rate it for a gift?
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nullama 13 Oct 2022
Yeah, I have it.
It's definitely worth getting it, and I would be happy to receive it as a gift.
Quality of the print itself is fine. It's a paperback, and the cover has an interesting design, with a hole in it, revealing a Bitcoin. It looks nice.
reply
0 sats \ 4 replies \ @ek 13 Oct 2022
Wait, is this your reading list as in "you still want to read" or have you read all these books?
reply
50 sats \ 3 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
already read yah sry that's confusing
reply
2358 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 13 Oct 2022
Wow, that's crazy. And I thought I am doing good with 3 books so far, haha
reply
576 sats \ 1 reply \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
once you catch that bitcoin bug...
reply
576 sats \ 0 replies \ @User21000000 13 Oct 2022
Once you catch it
There is no going back!
reply
2551 sats \ 1 reply \ @sb 13 Oct 2022
Hey! There are some fantastic book recommendations in these comments.
But I have to give a shout-out to "When Money Dies" by Adam Fergusson. I have not personally experienced hyperinflation, so this truly opened my eyes to the horrors it brings.
I picked out a quote to convince you to read it.
“Just before the First World War in 1913, the German mark, the British shilling, the French franc, and the Italian lira were all worth about the same. . .
At the end of 1923, it would have been possible to exchange a shilling, a franc or a lira for up to 1,000,000,000,000 marks. . .
The mark was dead, one million-millionth of its former self. It had taken almost ten years to die.”
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Thanks! that excerpt is very gripping
reply
2100 sats \ 1 reply \ @jespada 12 Oct 2022 freebie
You should also check:
reply
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @jespada 18 Oct 2022 freebie
https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/online-offline-classes.html
reply
5050 sats \ 10 replies \ @rijndael 12 Oct 2022
Computer Science. Focus on algorithms, networking, security, systems programming (bitcoin core is C++).
reply
0 sats \ 9 replies \ @creampuff OP 12 Oct 2022
Thanks for the comment. Was just reading the Job listing for the MicroStrategy "Bitcoin Lightning Software Engineer" and it is looking for
  • Fluency in one or more of Go, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript; Full-stack skillset a plus
  • Experience with Rally or other Agile Management tools preferred
These languages are all pretty standard for CS but do most Bitcoin/lightning companies expect you to Scrum/use the agile method?
reply
10k sats \ 7 replies \ @rijndael 13 Oct 2022
Most companies these days use some bastardized version of scrum. Pretty much nobody does orthodox scrum. They either say they do and then do something kinda weird and homegrown or they say they use some variant of scrum (or another agile methodology) but do something slightly different. You’ll see SAFe (“scaled agile framework”, I ran into it in banking), scrum, you used to see a lot of XP but it’s not really in vogue anymore, lots of other things.
Read up on scrum, get some sense of it, and then don’t be too surprised when you start somewhere that claims that they do scrum and really they’re doing whatever whacky thing they could get people to go along with.
In terms of languages, those are all pretty standard. In bitcoin/lightning specifically, you will probably run into C/C++, python, and rust at some point. There are also some VERY passionate scala users doing some cool things. I wouldn’t stress about it too much. If you’ve learned a few languages, picking up new ones just becomes part of onboarding to a new project or company. For example, I’m working on a project with a LOT of Rust. We have a bunch of engineers that came from kotlin or golang backgrounds. So they’re learning rust right now. No big deal.
reply
100 sats \ 4 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Thanks I'll make sure to master it :) I mean I guess it makes sense that everyone has their own specialized version of Scrum. Have you seen anyone use Ruby? It was my first language but I still have yet to see any real widespread use of it. Excited to learn Rust :)
reply
3158 sats \ 3 replies \ @rijndael 13 Oct 2022
Yeah, I still run into ruby here and there. Amazon has a TON of ruby internally, believe it or not. I know some other companies that started with RoR and then got big and are still living with some ruby. I don’t see many new projects starting with it these days.
reply
534 sats \ 2 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
No kidding I thought it was all Python, Java, Javascript, C/C++ at the big tech companies. RoR/Ruby is a bit of a first love so it would be super cool to actually use it somewhere.
reply
534 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Wow just looked it up looks like Amazon, Home Depot, Boeing and Apple all use Ruby, my mind is blown.
reply
358 sats \ 0 replies \ @rijndael 13 Oct 2022
Most of the ruby I saw at Amazon was internal tooling, build scripts, that soft of thing.
reply
300 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 13 Oct 2022
What's your opinion of Rust? I heard so much good things about it and want to pick it up when I have time (don't know what project to do with it yet, maybe something with sockets?) but also am worried about getting disappointed because I have high expectations now, haha
reply
300 sats \ 0 replies \ @rijndael 13 Oct 2022
There’s some learning curve around ownership and there are some weird bits of syntax here and there (and Geeze async traits WHEN). But overall I really like it. The way I describe it is it kinda front-loads a lot of complexity/pain that you’d normally deal with at runtime to be compile-time grief. So some things take a bit longer to think through or work out, but generally if it compiled it’ll Just Work and be fast as hell.
reply
505 sats \ 0 replies \ @ek 13 Oct 2022
Yes, I think most companies do use some form of Scrum. I would say don't worry about Scrum. You'll learn it when you need it. But maybe others can share more experience.
reply
10 sats \ 0 replies \ @alpacachino 13 Oct 2022
Went through the list so far, think we have a lot covered, here it is anyways:
Good luck, man !
reply
5010 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullama 12 Oct 2022
I have enjoyed reading the original material from Satoshi himself. It's really nice to see the project grow from idea to a useful thing.
Here are all the public messages and source code written by Satoshi Nakamoto in an easy to browse way: Nakamoto Institute
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 12 Oct 2022
Thank you!! It's so wild we can read everything he wrote
reply
810 sats \ 1 reply \ @bitcointerest 13 Oct 2022
I'm not much of a teck wiz but I would recommend focusing on LN related solutions. The world needs these type of innovative solutions that can mitigate the threats we face today because of the failing banking industry. Sending money from A to B without prying eyes and virtually free is something that will liberate the world from the clutches of banking cartel owned countries. Goodluck with your studies. I am rooting for you.
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Thanks!
reply
4200 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 13 Oct 2022
I can also recommend the Bitcoin Core PR Review Club.
There, experience is passed on from core developers to newbies. Unfortunately, I always forget about it (damn, missed it again, lol) but the one time I joined it was really interesting to see how PRs are reviewed and tested
reply
186 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Woah this is sick! Maybe see you in there :)
reply
5 sats \ 0 replies \ @alpacachino 13 Oct 2022
Highly recommend this, still not sure how to contribute though still learning...
reply
4000 sats \ 3 replies \ @handsome_latino 13 Oct 2022
  1. Start with Mastering Bitcoin (mentioned somewhere else).
  2. Programming Bitcoin by Jimmy Song is a hard pill to digest but you must read it (or something alike) if you want to have better understanding.
  3. https://learnmeabitcoin.com <-- Greg is amazing at explaining difficult topics. Highly recommended for a deep dive on math / engineering topics.
Take courses in Coursera or EDX or any other similar systems. Tadge Dryja (one of the creators of the LN specification) has a whole course online from MIT https://dci.mit.edu/research/tag/Tadge+Dryja.
The videos are available here: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mas-s62-cryptocurrency-engineering-and-design-spring-2018/video_galleries/lecture-videos/
I am a CS major, and I would heavily advice against blockchain eng. unless you know it's strictly bitcoin, particularly because a lot of people in the community will value you out of your merits and hard work in projects / helping out, rather than a degree.
Even with that MIT degree, notice how many courses are about "cryptocoins" and even CDBCs. It's okay to inform yourself about those topics but if you disagree entirely with their idea would you like to be spending time in school taking courses on them?
When I went to CS school 15 years ago, if you didn't have a degree it would have been impossible. Nowadays PoW trumps degrees.
In the few months that I spent going into the rabbit hole I learned more about privacy, security, cryptography, encryption, math, than I did in school.
reply
90 sats \ 2 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Thanks! yah I got a similar feeling interacting with any of the economics professors that would be part of the blockchain eng track. All of them are bought and paid for Keynesian's where all they can imagine of the future is a "digital fed" whatever that means...
reply
2000 sats \ 1 reply \ @handsome_latino 13 Oct 2022
Yeah, and we can't really blame them -- if you profit from the system it's very hard to come out of it, but it is especially hard to realize things might be wrong for others. I talk from experience because I kind of did for some time.
If you do go some route make a post on SN to let us know and keep us posted on your progress ;)
Thanks for the juicy tip!
reply
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 21 Oct 2022
Certainly can't blame them. We just gotta build a better incorruptible world.
That's a great idea I'll revisit this account in a year :)
reply
4000 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheWildHustle 13 Oct 2022
Atlas shrugged The Mandibles
https://tomerstrolight.medium.com/the-lesson-of-the-golden-teacher-ee133f98efde
reply
437 sats \ 0 replies \ @creampuff OP 13 Oct 2022
Thank you ❤️ Rand is actually how I found out about the Cypherpunks and lightning I searched "Real life Galts Gulch" and the rest is history. Cheers :) can't wait to read The Mandibles and that Medium Article you linked.
reply