4 ms·

It shows a clear bias on the part of the author and a reason to believe they would argue in bad faith. The author being a founder a company for which cryptocur

It shows a clear bias on the part of the author and a reason to believe they would argue in bad faith. The author being a founder a company for which cryptocurrencies are competitors makes this doubly true.

meowface 5y ago
>The author being a founder a company for which cryptocurrencies are competitors makes this doubly true. I totally missed this. That makes it worse. The company's tagline is "[company name] digitises cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates [sic?]", which is a pretty clear overlap. I don't necessarily see any evidence he's doing anything in bad faith, though - I just think he's extremely biased and narrowly agenda-driven. My main issue is just how much he seems to viscerally hate cryptocurrencies. It makes it harder to take it seriously. Like how incredibly snarky and spiteful he comes across in his most recent ostensibly-about-programming blog post: https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/fpt.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/fpt.html cryptoBusinessLogic = bid $ 10000000 $ do profits <- runRansomware launderMoney profits drugCartels void $ smashPuppies It's all starting to feel so political and a little bit religious. I sense a lot of parallels between staunchly pro- and anti-cryptocurrency people and the US political divide and culture wars. I know it's an annoying trope (https://xkcd.com/774/ https://xkcd.com/774/), but in the case of both politics and cryptocurrency, each side seems insufferable. I feel "accidentally moderate" (http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html) on both topics. edit: Side note, just to counter-balance the criticism. I knew his name seemed familiar; he wrote one of the most useful and formative tutorials for me when I started programming about a decade ago: https://sdiehl.github.io/gevent-tutorial/ https://sdiehl.github.io/gevent-tutorial/. (Although it's a bit gauche now, I still use gevent for new projects to this day.) It's more due to serendipity than anything else since there's not anything too special about it, but in my case it's actually possible I never would've become a developer if not for his tutorial - I used it to build my first programming project at a time when I was kind of struggling with many concepts and unsure if I wanted to go through with it. It goes to show that there isn't necessarily much correlation between (one's perception of) people's technical and non-technical attributes.
- okareaman 5y ago
  I've followed Stephen Diehl for awhile got the idea that he hated Bitcoin and proof of work because it's a climate change disaster for the amount of electricity it uses. I feel he is sincere in that. I happen to agree with him, so maybe that makes him more credible to me.
  - meowface 5y ago
    It's a valid concern. Bitcoin could plausibly move to proof of stake at some point, though. And if it doesn't, there are still some PoS-based cryptocurrencies out there that won't have that problem, so disliking Bitcoin doesn't necessarily imply one should dislike all cryptocurrencies. From what I can tell, that's only one of his many criticisms, if you read his blog. I'm sure he's sincere about all of the criticisms, and I agree with many of them in a general sense, but I don't agree with the conclusions or the (IMO) hyperbolization.

meowface 5y ago

>The author being a founder a company for which cryptocurrencies are competitors makes this doubly true. I totally missed this. That makes it worse. The company's tagline is "[company name] digitises cash and settlement processes for multinational corporates [sic?]", which is a pretty clear overlap. I don't necessarily see any evidence he's doing anything in bad faith, though - I just think he's extremely biased and narrowly agenda-driven. My main issue is just how much he seems to viscerally hate cryptocurrencies. It makes it harder to take it seriously. Like how incredibly snarky and spiteful he comes across in his most recent ostensibly-about-programming blog post: https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/fpt.html https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/fpt.html cryptoBusinessLogic = bid $ 10000000 $ do profits <- runRansomware launderMoney profits drugCartels void $ smashPuppies It's all starting to feel so political and a little bit religious. I sense a lot of parallels between staunchly pro- and anti-cryptocurrency people and the US political divide and culture wars. I know it's an annoying trope (https://xkcd.com/774/ https://xkcd.com/774/), but in the case of both politics and cryptocurrency, each side seems insufferable. I feel "accidentally moderate" (http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html http://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html) on both topics. edit: Side note, just to counter-balance the criticism. I knew his name seemed familiar; he wrote one of the most useful and formative tutorials for me when I started programming about a decade ago: https://sdiehl.github.io/gevent-tutorial/ https://sdiehl.github.io/gevent-tutorial/. (Although it's a bit gauche now, I still use gevent for new projects to this day.) It's more due to serendipity than anything else since there's not anything too special about it, but in my case it's actually possible I never would've become a developer if not for his tutorial - I used it to build my first programming project at a time when I was kind of struggling with many concepts and unsure if I wanted to go through with it. It goes to show that there isn't necessarily much correlation between (one's perception of) people's technical and non-technical attributes.

okareaman 5y ago
I've followed Stephen Diehl for awhile got the idea that he hated Bitcoin and proof of work because it's a climate change disaster for the amount of electricity it uses. I feel he is sincere in that. I happen to agree with him, so maybe that makes him more credible to me.
- meowface 5y ago
  It's a valid concern. Bitcoin could plausibly move to proof of stake at some point, though. And if it doesn't, there are still some PoS-based cryptocurrencies out there that won't have that problem, so disliking Bitcoin doesn't necessarily imply one should dislike all cryptocurrencies. From what I can tell, that's only one of his many criticisms, if you read his blog. I'm sure he's sincere about all of the criticisms, and I agree with many of them in a general sense, but I don't agree with the conclusions or the (IMO) hyperbolization.