With our upcoming workload on Core v3 we are strengthening our Core team with the additional workforce. Our newest addition to the team is Bernie Snell, a back-end developer from the UK.

Core v2.6 will soon be live on the ARK Public Network. After this major upgrade, our Core team will focus all of their efforts on the development of the next iteration of Core that will be a foundation for years to come, Core v3.

One of the initial tasks for Bernie will be getting familiar with the newest ARK Core v3 codebase as well as the new concepts and features we are introducing. Having a tremendous interest in the consensus part of the blockchain, she is going to focus on making ARK’s consensus modular while researching on our implementation of a Tendermint based consensus algorithm.

About Bernie

Bernie isn’t new to the blockchain world, but let’s start at the beginning of her programming path. Bernie’s interest in development started around 3 years ago when she finished a coding Bootcamp in Manchester (UK). Quickly realizing that she had the right skillset and just couldn’t put the idea down. Bernie loves to learn new challenging things and has always assumed academia was the place to do that, with her being both creative and analytical she found coding instantly fun and satisfying. Before going full-on into coding she started working towards a Ph.D. in philosophy so the switch to programming might seem a bit “weird” to most people to which she adds:

I have a background in philosophy, and although people often find my switch to coding confusing, I personally think there’s a lot of similarity to it — in both you’re dealing with the “real” world which is messy and grey, and you have to distill that down into useful concepts which fit together logically — to me that’s the essence of OOP. I like the power it gives you to be part of building the future. I really think that technology isn’t inherently good or bad, it just is what you make it. It’s like blockchain — it can be a really disruptive force for social good, or it can just be co-opted by all the big tech giants and a lot of its radical potential will never be realized.

She acquired a position straight out of the coding bootcamp, being hired into a challenging role in building a 3D visualization library in Typescript. She built a Rules Engine to govern the placement and manipulation of 3D objects in a rendered scene. When taking over this role, she realized that the code which determined the movement of 3D objects was dispersed through-out the codebase, so she undertook a huge refactor — to extract these rules out and make them agnostic to the data they were being run on. Building the system using SOLID principles the engine was integrated into the codebase, instead of a similar POC done by a consultancy with a team of developers.

Her curiosity has led her to research and become more involved in decentralized systems. She has completed the ConsenSys Blockchain Developer Program, as well as traveling to the New York Recurse Center where she built a blockchain protocol and client in Rust focusing on redistributive economic principles.

She is proficient in Typescript (and by extension Javascript) with most of her work experience being on large codebases revolving around TS. Her knowledge also includes Rust based blockchain architecture and also game design with C#.

Outside of development, her hobbies include her love of creative things — music, art, reading, dancing, and movies. She also likes fitness, the outdoors, and cycling everywhere.

Welcome to the ARK family Bernie! We hope you will enjoy being one of the crew and helping ARK navigate this Core ship in the right direction!