An "inexperienced practitioner of cryptography" should not be writing a book about cryptography. It's great that such a person is learning, but you shouldn't be trying to pass on such information at that stage.

(I don't know the author either)

Remember that being wrong about something feels exactly the same as being right about something, so (extending "being wrong" to "being ignorant") unless somebody tells them they won't know they still have stuff to learn.

>Remember that being wrong about something feels exactly the same as being right about something

Not if you extend being wrong to being ignorant, no. When you're right about something in the sense of not being ignorant, you understand all the discussions and news easily, you know exactly what everyone is talking about, including reading academic articles on the subject, etc. When you're wrong about something your wrongness butts up against the correct model again and a gain and you're often left confused or unable to understand the actions, discussions, arguments, and conclusions, of others. (As opposed to seeing specific places they are wrong.) You can feel this lack of understanding. It just doesn't feel the same way as properly understanding a subject at all.

I would argue that this review is saying that the author's understanding falls a little short of par for the course. The author would probably have had a chance to see this for themselves by getting a little more into the literature.

Don't forget about Dunning–Kruger effect, though. One doesn't necessarily know they're ignorant.

An experienced publisher shouldn't be printing said book either.

At least I got an impression that Tptacek's most points are easily accountable so lets wait for Practical Cryptography With Go, 2nd Ed. :)

As bad as it may seem I've found that saying incorrect things results in more learning than staying quiet so I often say incorrect things but things I think are true. I'm embarrassed when I'm wrong but I always learn from it. I also ask "why?" a lot and "what is that?" if it makes sense to (or just Google it later). I learn this way. It helps solve ignorance. It doesn't make me a faster thinker which is something I may not be able to fix, and it doesn't help improve my motivation to learn more which I need to do more of instead of playing video games or creating things.

Writing a book to teach other people should not be considered first and foremost a way to learn a subject. You may learn when corrected, but at the expense of the readers that read the mistakes and did not see corrections. This is more important the more advanced or important the subject.

I would not write a book on structural engineering to learn the subject or become an expert. The stakes for the misinformation being spread are high.

I am exactly the same way.

> I have no clue who the author of Practical Cryptography With Go is.

https://leanpub.com/gocrypto