Re:Is Bitcoin a Scam?
by lxgr on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @07:23AM
(#25832772)
> What they were really doing - in my opinion - was cargo cult software development practices. They'd worked with complex well designed systems that they hadn't really understood and were reproducing a weird facsimile of it.
This is a very concise summary of most of the crypto/blockchain projects out there. Ideas are cheap, and calling out that you understand the CAP theorem and basic distributed systems theory doesn't mean you will be able to effectively solve problems as they practically arise.
However, it makes a lot of sense if you consider who the target audience of such whitepapers is. (I'd argue it's not engineers.)
I also don't think this generalization applies to all projects out there, but at this point, it seems like it's become more than a full-time job to see beyond the cargo culting, shiny landing pages and jargon-filled "whitepapers".
This is a very concise summary of most of the crypto/blockchain projects out there. Ideas are cheap, and calling out that you understand the CAP theorem and basic distributed systems theory doesn't mean you will be able to effectively solve problems as they practically arise.
However, it makes a lot of sense if you consider who the target audience of such whitepapers is. (I'd argue it's not engineers.)
I also don't think this generalization applies to all projects out there, but at this point, it seems like it's become more than a full-time job to see beyond the cargo culting, shiny landing pages and jargon-filled "whitepapers".