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Every time I read comments like this, I'm left wondering the author thinks of the people who are actually doing the work in question - here it's crypto, in othe

Every time I read comments like this, I'm left wondering the author thinks of the people who are actually doing the work in question - here it's crypto, in other cases it's new operating systems or game engines or programming languages or what have you. This is what I think: those people are not some non-human species beyond the comprehension of mere mortals, nor did they crawl into the world already knowing everything in their fields. We need more people experimenting and learning outside the boundaries of staid, safe product development, not less.

tialaramex 6y ago
People actually doing good work get to make new and interesting mistakes. They hope not to of course, but that's just how it goes. But what you and so many people want is permission to go on "experimenting and learning" by making the same mistakes the previous cohort of people "experimenting and learning" made, and those before them, and so on ad infinitum. That's futile. Stop it. Since the horizon of your imagination seems to be computer software let me expand a little bit with an example from a quite different discipline which is entirely illustrative of my point. Some years ago, an elderly couple were struck and seriously injured (one of them died I think) by a speeding tram. The accident investigation report found as you would expect a long list of causes, but one of them is particularly relevant to us here. On the _mainline railways_ subject to oversight from the same authorities and investigations by the same team, it had for many years been the practice to require Compliance as a psychological trait of drivers. Compliant people are inclined to obey rules, all else being equal. If you tell a Compliant person that the speed limit is 45mph they will tend to go no faster than 45mph whereas people who are less compliant might ask "Why?" or just decide it seems safe to do 55mph instead since what could go wrong? The driver of the tram was not tested for Compliance, his employers hadn't picked up on this requirement, and their drivers hadn't ever killed anybody by speeding before. Sure enough during the accident he was driving the tram faster than the maximum speed shown and was unable to stop it striking the elderly victims. You don't need to make your own mistakes to learn from other people's. Stop it.
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  I thought I was making a rather obvious point, so here it is in plainer terms: you can't keep up a sufficient flow of new people in a field (especially a niche one) if everybody's response to "How do I start doing this?" is "No no no, this is only for a chosen few grandfathered-in greybeards and the rest of us are too stupid to even try". There's absolutely nothing wrong with people trying their hand at difficult things, even if the only thing it produces is first-hand experience/appreciation of how difficult they are. Black boxes and low bus factors don't aid progress, they hinder it. Additionally, it's astonishingly not unheard of for people to, well, research the experiments and studies of those before them before trying their hand at their own; if you start all your own experiments by jumping headfirst in total ignorance, perhaps consider slowing down a little? Then again you've chosen to go on a rant about speeding trams and fatalities when the literal third sentence in the linked article is "don't use [your crypto] in production until it's vetted by professionals".
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    "No no no, this is only for a chosen few grandfathered-in greybeards and the rest of us are too stupid to even try". This isn't even a straw man version of what I wrote. You should make your own thread to argue with this imaginary claim if that's what you want to do. Or better maybe start a Twitter thread about it. As a reminder, here's that quote from the article, attributed to a co-worker but illustrative of a pretty common trope: > How are people supposed to learn (from mistakes) if they don't roll their own crypto? How are they supposed to learn? From other people's mistakes. There is no need to make those mistakes again yourself. Stop it.
  - Beldin 6y ago
    There is actually a standard way for new people to get into crypto. However, it is emphatically not to write your own crypto and let others evaluate it. Everyone can make a crypto system they themselves cannot break. That says very little about the system's security, unless you're actually goods at breaking crypto. That is why you begin learning crypto by breaking other people's crypto. Once you understand some of the pitfalls, your designs are far less likely to incorporate the same pitfalls.

tialaramex 6y ago

People actually doing good work get to make new and interesting mistakes. They hope not to of course, but that's just how it goes. But what you and so many people want is permission to go on "experimenting and learning" by making the same mistakes the previous cohort of people "experimenting and learning" made, and those before them, and so on ad infinitum. That's futile. Stop it. Since the horizon of your imagination seems to be computer software let me expand a little bit with an example from a quite different discipline which is entirely illustrative of my point. Some years ago, an elderly couple were struck and seriously injured (one of them died I think) by a speeding tram. The accident investigation report found as you would expect a long list of causes, but one of them is particularly relevant to us here. On the _mainline railways_ subject to oversight from the same authorities and investigations by the same team, it had for many years been the practice to require Compliance as a psychological trait of drivers. Compliant people are inclined to obey rules, all else being equal. If you tell a Compliant person that the speed limit is 45mph they will tend to go no faster than 45mph whereas people who are less compliant might ask "Why?" or just decide it seems safe to do 55mph instead since what could go wrong? The driver of the tram was not tested for Compliance, his employers hadn't picked up on this requirement, and their drivers hadn't ever killed anybody by speeding before. Sure enough during the accident he was driving the tram faster than the maximum speed shown and was unable to stop it striking the elderly victims. You don't need to make your own mistakes to learn from other people's. Stop it.

filleduchaos 6y ago
I thought I was making a rather obvious point, so here it is in plainer terms: you can't keep up a sufficient flow of new people in a field (especially a niche one) if everybody's response to "How do I start doing this?" is "No no no, this is only for a chosen few grandfathered-in greybeards and the rest of us are too stupid to even try". There's absolutely nothing wrong with people trying their hand at difficult things, even if the only thing it produces is first-hand experience/appreciation of how difficult they are. Black boxes and low bus factors don't aid progress, they hinder it. Additionally, it's astonishingly not unheard of for people to, well, research the experiments and studies of those before them before trying their hand at their own; if you start all your own experiments by jumping headfirst in total ignorance, perhaps consider slowing down a little? Then again you've chosen to go on a rant about speeding trams and fatalities when the literal third sentence in the linked article is "don't use [your crypto] in production until it's vetted by professionals".
- tialaramex 6y ago
  "No no no, this is only for a chosen few grandfathered-in greybeards and the rest of us are too stupid to even try". This isn't even a straw man version of what I wrote. You should make your own thread to argue with this imaginary claim if that's what you want to do. Or better maybe start a Twitter thread about it. As a reminder, here's that quote from the article, attributed to a co-worker but illustrative of a pretty common trope: > How are people supposed to learn (from mistakes) if they don't roll their own crypto? How are they supposed to learn? From other people's mistakes. There is no need to make those mistakes again yourself. Stop it.
- Beldin 6y ago
  There is actually a standard way for new people to get into crypto. However, it is emphatically not to write your own crypto and let others evaluate it. Everyone can make a crypto system they themselves cannot break. That says very little about the system's security, unless you're actually goods at breaking crypto. That is why you begin learning crypto by breaking other people's crypto. Once you understand some of the pitfalls, your designs are far less likely to incorporate the same pitfalls.