2023 Jan 25

• Ohh, electrum is a protocol to connect to a full node (running on a server) to source chain data (and it’s also a desktop wallet?)

• Responded to more feedback on my PR and it got merged! Some reflection:

  • Sure I’m new so I’m not expected to know absolutely everything, but…

    • I should be more diligent about thoroughly reviewing my commits/code before putting up for others’ inspection - especially now that I have more things I know to look for

      • It’s nice to respond to feedback quickly, but I should prioritize being confident in my changes. Confidence with speed will come with time.

    • It’s a serious, heavy duty project. If I expect to contribute anything meaningful, I’m going to have to know the protocol and codebase in detail.

    • I should really understand more about how this codebase is used. If I’m going to contribute, I need to have a good idea of what it’s being used for to understand how to best implement a solution to an issue.

  • Get in the habit of - running test and autoformat on every commit, squashing/rebasing when it makes sense, rebase don’t merge main, checking that the commits are what you think they are (weird changes don’t get rebased) and don’t have whitespace, making sure if you are expecting someone to review it that anytime you make a change you have reviewed the whole PR and you didn’t miss anything trivial that shouldn’t be wasting reviewers’ bandwidth, always assume unwraps are unsafe unless they are from locks

  • Reviewing code is one of the best ways to start contributing.

  • I sort of just want to open more PRs and get more commits in, but I think I would be able to learn more and contribute more by doing a lot more review, and taking some time before picking up another issue. I can still explore the open issues, and if there’s something that I think I understand pretty well, I can pick it up.

  • I’m considering maybe even trying to build something using LDK, maybe at least something small, just to get a better understanding of the user than I get from ldk-sample. Maybe I should do more research into what wallet developers face? I don’t know, but something to get a better understanding of a user. Maybe it’ll just come with deeper understanding of the protocol and codebase.

• Finished the saylor course certifications for summer of bitcoin screening today

• It’s cool, I realize I don’t have to (and really shouldn’t) try to follow some regiment to try and force myself to get better at lightning stuff. I can just seek out whatever interests me, and that will most likely naturally lead to me learning more. I need to knudge myself to remember to look at more code and to really go in depth, but otherwise I can jump around as I please.