Getting Started With Contributing to Bitcoin

[matt11235]

Hi all, I have been fascinated with Bitcoin for some now and have been collecting/spending them for a while too.

I now want to start developing and contributing to the Bitcoin software, but I don't really know where to start. I have used C++ for some time now and feel proficient with it however I know very little about networking and cryptography.

I've read the Bitcoin whitepaper but I still don't feel confident in my abilities, can somebody point me in the right direction? (Books, papers, ...)

Thanks

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[cr1776]

A great place to start is with the code itself:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

Downloading it, reading it, and playing with it.  For many, looking at code is worth 1000s of man pages.

Also check out:
https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-examples
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1691123.0
https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency

[matt11235]

A great place to start is with the code itself:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

Downloading it, reading it, and playing with it.  For many, looking at code is worth 1000s of man pages.

Also check out:
https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-examples
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1691123.0
https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency

Yes I should definitely read or skim through the code, but there is a lot of it to get through.

Thanks for the Coursera link too, that seems really helpful.

[Senor.Bla]

The Documentation on Bitcoin.org is helpful.
https://bitcoin.org/en/developer-documentation

Also there is this book by Paul Huang called "A Dissection of Bitcoin", but i only skimmed through, so a second opinion would be appreciated. It is not up to date as it works trough the original Bitcoin code, but i hope it is worth the time (as i want to read it myself once i have time for it).

[alonmuroch]

From my personal experience, starting with adding unit-testing would help the best. It will also make it more likely you will see your PR get approved.