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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 co
by cs702 9y ago
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.
- busterarm 9y ago> too impressive an achievement to be the work of a single person working in isolation. It's been done before... for example, djb
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoCould you explain what his accomplishment was in terms a non-cryptographer could understand?
- btilly 9y agoFirst of all djb is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_J._Bernstein 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 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.
- jameskegel 9y agoWow, this was a path I did not expect this conversation to take. Thank you for mentioning this.
- kobeya 9y agoOr Linus and Linux?
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoFrom 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.
- feelin_googley 9y ago"... not some group of smart people who try to come to a consensus." You mean like the IETF?
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoYes, 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.
- feelin_googley 9y agoThe 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.
- wmf 9y agoIETF 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.
- feelin_googley 9y agoCouldn't have said it better myself.
- xutopia 9y agoIt'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.
- caoxuwen 9y agoI think it's very hard for a group of people to coordinate behind a pseudonym that's so high profile.
- farhanhubble 9y agoCareful analysis of the source code might offer some clues regarding whether it's the handiwork of a person or a group.