Bitcoin is Open Source. The case for "#LearnToCode"

There are frequent posts asking about how to learn bitcoin. I feel too few of them seriously consider the idea of learning to code. And I'm not talking about writing your own ECDSA library, I'm talking about typing your error message in the github search box on the repo and reading the 10 lines before and after it.

Reading code is significantly easier than writing code, and much of the original open-source movement was about wanting to read the code more than anything just to figure out how it worked and why it might break. I wouldn't expect 9 out of 10 bitcoin users to do it, but I'm still surprised at how few do.

Python in particular makes this problem easy to solve. It is an incredibly simple language and once you understand the first 10% of it, you can begin to make since of languages like C++, Rust, and Javascript. Not mastery, but understanding.

With the addition of Taproot, there are hundreds of wallets looking for contributors to add support (pull-request / PR). Sometimes the support can come from effectively cloning a lot of code from one open-source repo to another.

There are plenty of online courses for beginning python, and all the automated testing for bitcoin-core is written in python. Trezor and Electrum are also written in python. Personally, I find the official python documentation simple enough to read.

Here's a simple list of books / manuals / source that may help you on your way.

1. Python Tutorial (easiest language for most to learn)
2. GPG Beginners Guide (just some basic concepts of crypto)
3. Electrum Manual (simple SPV wallet)
4. Electrum Source Code (easiest for most to understand)
5. Bitcoin Core v0.1.5 (only 20k lines, not difficult at all)
6. Edward Snowden Book (Ch 22, 23 and 24 cover ELI5 encryption)

Once your ready, consider submitting code to one of your favorite opens source projects.