Eight years ago at Perth LCA I sat in the kernel mini-conf for the first time and listened to a bunch of kernel hackers discuss patching the kernel - at that moment I said to myself “I want to do that”.
I spent the next five years trying to become a kernel hacker, while I managed to get a bunch of patches mainlined I never managed to get a paid gig doing kernel work. In 2019 I joined a small start up in Sydney working on atomic swaps between crypto assets, that was the start of my bitcoin dev journey however I still had the dream of being a ‘proper’ open source developer. Next I had another detour by way of working on a proprietary multi-chain wallet. And now, finally, I have made it to my long searched for destination. Today I start paid full time work on rust-bitcoin by way of an open source grant.
Many, many years ago, I read Eric Raymond’s How To Become A Hacker and since then I have dreamt of working all day writing code and giving away the results of my labour. From this day forward that dream has become a reality. I am humbled by this opportunity and extremely grateful to those who made it possible.
Many thanks and much love,
Tobin.