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I'm not willing to "give them a break" if they ignored decades of existing academic research and production software to roll their own low-quality packages that

I'm not willing to "give them a break" if they ignored decades of existing academic research and production software to roll their own low-quality packages that actively cost users money through bugs and footguns. Ethereum is not breaking new ground all over the place to the extent that would justify overlooking quality issues, even if it's the first to do particular things. I'm sure the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole contains some clever designs or even good engineering by the people who back it, but that doesn't excuse the fact that they overestimated their competence and their customers are paying for it. It's not "more complex and sophisticated than I'm giving it credit for": I'm giving it "credit" for being too complex and too sophisticated, creating a huge attack surface for security vulnerabilities and lots of space for bugs to dwell because the developers insisted on NIHing things they had no reason to. Complex and Sophisticated is not a good thing in mission-critical software. You want code that is as simple as possible, does the job correctly, and is easy to understand and audit. Complex and Sophisticated is what you write when tackling an incredibly difficult problem or when you're trying to get a promotion. You seem to be confusing the (no personal opinion on this statement) "fantastic and successful" nature of the Ethereum platform with its quality. There's no intrinsic correspondence between success and quality. JavaScript is wildly successful and the experience of using it in 2017 is (thanks to modern tooling and browsers) pretty good, some people might even call it fantastic. But that doesn't erase the long history of defects in the language, defects that people continue to pay for. People invested sweat and blood to turn it into a successful thing. Likewise, sweat and blood is being invested to compensate for Ethereum's numerous deficiencies. Some of those investments were made by the Ethereum developers - props to them - but a lot of that cost is being paid by end users, security researchers, and investors. Tony Hoare calls nulls his 'billion dollar mistake'. How much do you think the cost of Ethereum's numerous design and engineering errors will add up to when all is said and done?

zeroxfe 9y ago
Find me a system that does not "actively cost users money through bugs and footguns", and I'll find you something that isn't used. > Complex and Sophisticated is not a good thing in mission-critical software. The complexity of Ethereum comes from the domain. You can hold on to the platitudes. > Complex and Sophisticated is what you write when tackling an incredibly difficult problem or when you're trying to get a promotion. If you don't believe that cryptocurrencies are an "incredibly difficult problem", then, again, you're showing your ignorance. As someone who worked on distributed consensus systems (Paxos) for nearly a decade, I would recommend you pick up a textbook before passing judgement on the nature of this problem. > You seem to be confusing the (no personal opinion on this statement) "fantastic and successful" nature of the Ethereum platform with its quality. Thanks, however, I'm quite familiar with the orthogonal nature of success and quality -- it also turns out that just because it's successful doesn't automatically make it low quality. And really... chill out.
- wruza 9y ago
  So we shall believe that new dubious language with its runtime and each-time custom scripts magically turns high-quality, because the environment is complex and someone spent time and read a book in that area? Despite the fact that many users suffered security bugs in carefully managed world-grade quality products for decades and it still happens? Okay. >chill out and give me your money, right. Yet another soapy bubble.

zeroxfe 9y ago

Find me a system that does not "actively cost users money through bugs and footguns", and I'll find you something that isn't used. > Complex and Sophisticated is not a good thing in mission-critical software. The complexity of Ethereum comes from the domain. You can hold on to the platitudes. > Complex and Sophisticated is what you write when tackling an incredibly difficult problem or when you're trying to get a promotion. If you don't believe that cryptocurrencies are an "incredibly difficult problem", then, again, you're showing your ignorance. As someone who worked on distributed consensus systems (Paxos) for nearly a decade, I would recommend you pick up a textbook before passing judgement on the nature of this problem. > You seem to be confusing the (no personal opinion on this statement) "fantastic and successful" nature of the Ethereum platform with its quality. Thanks, however, I'm quite familiar with the orthogonal nature of success and quality -- it also turns out that just because it's successful doesn't automatically make it low quality. And really... chill out.

wruza 9y ago
So we shall believe that new dubious language with its runtime and each-time custom scripts magically turns high-quality, because the environment is complex and someone spent time and read a book in that area? Despite the fact that many users suffered security bugs in carefully managed world-grade quality products for decades and it still happens? Okay. >chill out and give me your money, right. Yet another soapy bubble.