x * y = k, and Other Things I Should've Learned Sooner

Getting into blockchain as a smart contract dev is a different experience than entering almost any other sector. Every field has its niche things, sure, but you mostly learn by understanding well-known patterns and implementing them. In smart contract development, though, you actually have to read other people's contracts. Not just snippets, the whole thing. That's how you grow, and the best way to do it is to go through some of the most battle-tested protocols out there. And Uniswap is the obvious place to start. It's been one of the cornerstones of DeFi for as long as I can remember, long before I even got into the space. So every once in a while I'd think, alright, today's the day. Then I'd open the repos. Two of them, and a couple of utility repos too. Multiple contracts cross-referencing each other. An actual whitepaper with actual math in it (and with my just-above-average mathematics, I wasn't exactly jumping for joy. I still am not) . The tab would go into hibernation, and I'd