Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by cs702 on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @04:48PM
(#15135869)
Which is why I wouldn't be surprised if "Satoshi Nakamoto" turns out to be, not an individual, but a tightly-knit team of people, including BOTH professional coders who write software for a living AND computer scientists with strong academic backgrounds. Bitcoin is in my view too impressive an achievement to be the work of a single person working in isolation.
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Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by cocktailpeanuts on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @05:04PM
(#15136011)
From my experience truly visionary project never comes from a group of "talented" people but a single person who had a laser focused vision and did whatever possible to make that happen. Having a focused vision is what drives the brilliant solution, not some group of smart people who try to come to a consensus.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by feelin_googley on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @07:18PM
(#15136927)
"... not some group of smart people who try to come to a consensus."
You mean like the IETF?
IETF doesn't create the vision (and the results are embarrassing when they try); it standardizes stuff (and lets people add tons of optional complexity) after the initial prototype is done. IEEE and ECMA have similar attitudes while ISO seems to do more design-by-committee.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by feelin_googley on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @08:44PM
(#15137296)
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by cocktailpeanuts on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @07:52PM
(#15137095)
Yes, like IETF. Not discrediting their contribution. Organizations like those are needed, just like how a non-founder operator CEO can be beneficial once a startup takes off.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by feelin_googley on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @08:50PM
(#15137319)
The problem I see is when in their supposed wisdom they discredit the potential contribution of some lone visionary. And this goes back to your original premise, with which I strongly agree. History shows that sometimes one highly skilled programmer working alone has accomplished things that teams of programmers could not.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by tonyarkles on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @10:44PM
(#15137812)
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7282
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/24.pdf
"Rough consensus and running code"
> too impressive an achievement to be the work of a single person working in isolation.
It's been done before... for example, djb
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by jameskegel on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @05:57PM
(#15136427)
Wow, this was a path I did not expect this conversation to take. Thank you for mentioning this.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by ghostbrainalpha on Wednesday August 30, 2017 @05:12PM
(#15136084)
Could you explain what his accomplishment was in terms a non-cryptographer could understand?
First of all djb is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein and the accomplishment was releasing a secure email server (qmail), a secure webserver (publicfile), and a secure BIND server (djbdns). Both qmail and djbdns became widely used, and the main alternatives were projects supported by large teams.
It took 8 years before the first bug was found in these projects.
I highly recommend reading through the guidelines in https://cr.yp.to/qmail/guarantee.html for how to write secure software. In particular point 5, Don't Parse, is broadly applicable and under appreciated. A well-known class of bugs arising from this error are SQL injection attacks.
Or Linus and Linux?
I think it's very hard for a group of people to coordinate behind a pseudonym that's so high profile.
It's hard to tell though. It may well be a single person who was inspired by multiple people's work and ideas. I like to compare works of single individual work is with how amazing Lord of the Rings is. I'm impressed it took a single person to write the whole thing.
Re:Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
by farhanhubble on Thursday August 31, 2017 @07:17AM
(#15139516)
Careful analysis of the source code might offer some clues regarding whether it's the handiwork of a person or a group.