It wasn't so long ago that I was pounding away on my Matasano Challenge code, and thinking about how I might write about the progress I was making. It was abstract, though -- progress to be sure, but a lot of the kind of thing you seem to learn when looking back at code you keyed several months prior. Painful in some ways, enlightening study in others.

I had already been distracted once, hence the several months. Somewhere in the midst of a real course I had to take in a real school (Matasano's efforts and organization are real, of course, but I didn't have to pay them money or depend on a certain grade for economic reasons) and the crush of raising a couple of infants who don't know a whole lot about cryptography or programming, my code fell to the wayside. I still hope to get back to it one day.

But something else happened recently, even as I was starting to delve back into the Matasano stuff. A new challenge, modeled on Matasano's approach, but geared toward Linux kernel hacking and many of the practical intricacies involved with the Linux kernel workflow: coding style, patch submission, and so on, as well as the long slog of learning how an operating system actually works.

I found out about Eudyptula last month and signed right up. My free time has been wrapped around that axle ever since. Unfortunately, that means I'm not investing time in active FOSS projects or code I can share, which was a thing with Matasano, too. But I'm working on a foundation.

I'm still fascinated with cryptography, both practical and theoretical, and the kinds of tasks that Matasano was throwing at me were also especially useful in getting my head around some day-to-day code organization and workflow. But system programming has always been a deeper interest of mine than some of the common learn-to-code tutorial stuff out there these days. My day job involves embedded systems and their designers, too, and I always had a strong inpulse for at least the idea of actually developing the kinds of real-time systems I test and troubleshoot. But learning the low level has often felt pretty slow-going, and I haven't found a whole lot of programmatic, goal-oriented guidance. Eudyptula's little penguin seems, so far, to be providing just what I needed.

That's not to say he's making it easy; it's still slow-going. But that's because the Linux kernel is massive and mindbogglingly complex. There's a sense of progress, though, of what to read next, of what I'm missing. And #kernelnewbies (an IRC channel) is providing a good amount of assistance and perspective, too. There is a sense of goal in it all, too: The introductory email in the series suggests that after completing the exercises one should be equipped, if not to be a kernel subsystem maintainer (heavens forbid!), at least to understand what the heck it is they do, and to be an active developer.

And in addition to all that personal practical coolness, we're talking about the Linux kernel: one of the most significant collaborative efforts in the history of cooperation. Perplexing at times, not without its barbs and pitfalls, but an effective sort of juggernaut that we all use and benefit from every day, whether or not we know it or think about it. And in its own interest of longevity, that juggernaut has produced this little spinoff; it's pretty exciting to be plugged into that.