I never imagined I’d dive so deep into the nitty-gritty of network programming, but thanks to @solanaturbine, I now find myself exploring not just the high-level concepts, but the low-level details too. For context, eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a virtual machine inside the kernel that runs sandbox programs. Yesterday, in our Turbine ADV SVM cohort session, @bergabman mentioned eBPF during class discussions. I already knew the basic definition of eBPF and what it does but not low level, but the conversation sparked my curiosity to understand it better, especially why @solana uses it (sbpf), but first I had to go and understand the original BPF and what it does then work my way up My search led me to a six-year-old article by @alessandrod, which gave me some foundation. From there, I went down the YouTube rabbit hole. Some videos helped, some didn’t, but the one by @CodiLime stood out, with actual code examples. I didn’t just want to watch; I wanted to code along and run it on my machine. That’s when I hit my first roadblock: compiling the program. BPF program needs to be loaded with a tool, a commonly used one is - bpftool. It wasn’t installed on my system, so I spent hours querying AI tools, troubleshooting, and installing the right dependencies. After some trial and error, it finally worked, and I successfully compiled my first BPF program. I might put together a separate thread later to break down eBPF in simpler terms and how it works in the Solana blockchain with smart contract executions, but for now this was my little adventure into the kernel. Links to some of those materials will be down below in case you want to dive in 😉