> I never really understood the appeal of nerding out on cryptography Gaining an understanding of how it works can help you avoid some of the pitfalls when dea

> I never really understood the appeal of nerding out on cryptography Gaining an understanding of how it works can help you avoid some of the pitfalls when dealing with it. IMHO I always work better when I understand what's going on at least one layer down from where I'm playing. Nerding out on it can also help you understand how serious some attacks are and how broken your systems might be. Never roll your own is good advice in production. Knock yourself out for test systems, for fun and exploration, but if you have some 'fun innovating' that you think might be good for real world use, pay someone that knows their stuff to audit it before trusting it. That's just common sense when it's so easy to get wrong.