I've been around for a long time, since the earliest days of Linux. I started with 0.11a and enjoyed hacking the kernel to get it to do what I wanted. I was one of the first developers in the Debian project, but I got burned out by all the ego-wars and left.
10 years later, Gtk+ and Gnome have caught my attention and I'm in the process of learning how it's all put together. I'm interested in writing code visualisation and modification tools; eg, being able to automate things like moving the GtkObject code to Glib, rather than having to spend a lot of time doing this manually.
I'm a drivers and low level kind of programmer, so this is my first foray into the world of writing programs that actually interact with the user. The hardest part is coming to grips with OOPs and other stuff that I bypassed for all these years.