From 23053559dca7d52a5491cb01637d0cf04eac0b76 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Alekos Filini Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2023 15:15:05 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] Add blog post about taking a break from BDK --- content/blog/taking-a-break-from-bdk.md | 69 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 69 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/blog/taking-a-break-from-bdk.md diff --git a/content/blog/taking-a-break-from-bdk.md b/content/blog/taking-a-break-from-bdk.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..80a1611 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/taking-a-break-from-bdk.md @@ -0,0 +1,69 @@ ++++ +title = "Taking a Break From BDK" +date = "2023-01-25" +description = "Taking a break from my maintainer role of BDK, what it means and what's next" +tags = [ + "bdk", + "personal", +] ++++ + +My yearly grant from Brink is about to expire, and I decided not to renew it so that I could take a break from BDK. + +## Why? + +The short answer is that lately I've been finding it hard to work on BDK: what I mean is that, for a reason that I can't really explain +myself, I lost some of the motivation that was driving me to work on this project. Essentially I went from being compltely captured and +fascinated by working on it, to having to force myself to work because I would naturally tend to procrastinate. + +This is very unusual for me, over the years I've always been very passionate about what I do and I would normally find it hard to *stop* +working on something. I would have to remind myself to eat and sleep, because my interest was completely captured by whatever project I +was working on at the time. + +Maybe I'm burnt out, or maybe it's something else. Either way, this had a pretty big negative impact on my productivity, and as a +consequence on my happiness in general because I felt like my work was not up to my standards. + +## What's gonna change? + +First of all let me talk a bit about the roadmap I have in mind: over the past few months we have been working on what we call "[bdk\_core][rvYlbh_link][^rvYlbh]", +essentially a set of core libraries that can be used as building blocks for a wallet. The difference between `bdk` and `bdk_core` is that +the core libraries are at a very low level: they are very powerful but also harder to use compared to the full `bdk` library. + +The plan is to eventually update the `bdk` library to internally use the "core" components: this would give advanced users more flexibilty, +because they would be able to work at the "core" level if they need to, while keeping the general API easy enough for everybody to use. + +We were hoping to be done by the end of 2022, and while we are actually pretty close we still aren't finished yet. For this reason, I think it's +best for me to stay around at least until that's done, and we will release [BDK `v1.0`][krRYLO_link][^krRYLO]. + +After that's finished the main difference will be that I won't be reviewing PRs or hanging around so much in the BDK discord. Or maybe I will, +sometimes. I don't know. Either way, there are a bunch of other people working on BDK full time with grants from entities like Spiral, so +I'm not concerned at all with the development side of things while I'm away. + +## What I'm gonna do next? + +I'm planning to do consultancy/contracting work for a few months: I think it will be good for me to spend time on a bunch of different projects to +find the motivation and the love for coding that I seem to have lost a bit lately. + +I'm also working on opening [hack.bs][UAlowC_link][^UAlowC], which is a physical hackerspace for bitcoiners and cypherpunks in northern Italy. I'm sure that will +take some of my time over the next few months, although being strictly non-profit I will still have to find myself proper gigs to earn some +money. + +If you are an individual or a company and you feel like you could use my help somehow, feel free to shoot me an [email](/contact). I have experience +in many fields of computer science, ranging from web development, to embedded development, to devops/sysadmin. + +## Conclusion + +It's very hard for me to step down (even if temporarily) from my role with BDK, but I feel like this is the right thing to do given the +circumnstances. I hope taking a break will allow me to come back in the future with even more motivation and more ideas. + +I'd like to thank Brink for the support they've given me in the past couple of years, and I'd like to apologize to everybody for my work +which I know has not been great lately. + + +[UAlowC_link]: https://hack.bs.it/ +[rvYlbh_link]: https://bitcoindevkit.org/blog/bdk-core-pt1/ +[krRYLO_link]: https://bitcoindevkit.org/blog/road-to-bdk-1/ + +[^UAlowC]: *hack.bs* [[original]](https://hack.bs.it/) [[archived]](https://archive.md/iQSPI) +[^rvYlbh]: *`bdk_core`: a new architecture for the Bitcoin Dev Kit | Bitcoin Dev Kit Documentation* [[original]](https://bitcoindevkit.org/blog/bdk-core-pt1/) [[archived]](https://archive.md/LjtcN) +[^krRYLO]: *The Road to BDK 1.0 | Bitcoin Dev Kit Documentation* [[original]](https://bitcoindevkit.org/blog/road-to-bdk-1/) [[archived]](https://archive.md/1Z3nT) -- 2.49.0