5 ms·

Good grief, this is like machine language for money

by ddingus 5y ago

mox1 5y ago
exactly, with no-do overs. Everyone hand codes their assembly correctly on the first try right!?!!
- capableweb 5y ago
  There are plenty of do-overs, it's called the "development phase" and involves testing things on your local computer with the team. No one gets everything right the first time, but with a lot of testing, you can actually write software that does exactly what you think it will do, and you can achieve pretty cool stuff. Remember that humans wrote the software that took humanity to the moon!
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    As we know, no software has had bugs caught once launched to prod. The existence of some software that worked under this model is not evidence that it is a good model. "Just test prior to release" is not a complete solution.
  - mox1 5y ago
    Yes, and that code had bugs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2019/07/16/apollo-11s-infamous-landing-error-code-1202-offers-earthly-lessons-for-self-driving-cars/?sh=4934e30734bc https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2019/07/16/apollo-11... There are 0 do-overs on smart contracts in production. No stopping the network for a minute to triage, no rolling back a minute, no circuit breakers. No "Error 1202, do you want to continue?" pop-up messages.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    In this case, not really. User was calling a "ROM" What you describe are dry runs.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      Are you talking about the user from https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/sfz4kw/did_i_just_lose_half_a_million_dollars_by_sending/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/sfz4kw/did_i_just... ? And do you mean "read-only memory"? I'm not sure how that's relevant. The contract they made the transfer to is read-only yes, like any contract on Ethereum. But they could have tested the contract call with a smaller sum before actually performing the bigger one. Just like the people writing the computer that took us to the moon, I'm pretty sure they tried it before in small-scale simulations before hooking it up to the rocket and letting it go to the moon.
      - zepto 5y ago
        The idea that people need to treat financial transactions in crypto as if they were writing software for a moon mission shows how impractical the entire space is.
        capableweb 5y ago
        If that was the case, I'd agree with you. But as outlined in the comments of this submission time and time again, it was not what happened here. The user was not doing a normal transfer (at least, they didn't want to, but they ended up doing). They didn't know what they were doing at all, a simply Google search would have showed them the way. Using UIs instead of interacting with the contract directly would have prevented them from making the mistake they did. Doing a small test transfer before doing the big one would have revealed what was wrong as well. It's not that I'm comparing writing software for moon missions with making cryptocurrency transactions. I was directly replying to mox1 implying that writing 100% correct code is impossible and shouldn't be attempted.
        ddingus 5y ago
        "simply Google search would have showed them the way" That is how high toxicity systems get made.
      - ddingus 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Good grief, this is like machine language for money

mox1 5y ago

exactly, with no-do overs. Everyone hand codes their assembly correctly on the first try right!?!!

capableweb 5y ago
There are plenty of do-overs, it's called the "development phase" and involves testing things on your local computer with the team. No one gets everything right the first time, but with a lot of testing, you can actually write software that does exactly what you think it will do, and you can achieve pretty cool stuff. Remember that humans wrote the software that took humanity to the moon!
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  As we know, no software has had bugs caught once launched to prod. The existence of some software that worked under this model is not evidence that it is a good model. "Just test prior to release" is not a complete solution.
- mox1 5y ago
  Yes, and that code had bugs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2019/07/16/apollo-11s-infamous-landing-error-code-1202-offers-earthly-lessons-for-self-driving-cars/?sh=4934e30734bc https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2019/07/16/apollo-11... There are 0 do-overs on smart contracts in production. No stopping the network for a minute to triage, no rolling back a minute, no circuit breakers. No "Error 1202, do you want to continue?" pop-up messages.
- ddingus 5y ago
  In this case, not really. User was calling a "ROM" What you describe are dry runs.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    Are you talking about the user from https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/sfz4kw/did_i_just_lose_half_a_million_dollars_by_sending/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/sfz4kw/did_i_just... ? And do you mean "read-only memory"? I'm not sure how that's relevant. The contract they made the transfer to is read-only yes, like any contract on Ethereum. But they could have tested the contract call with a smaller sum before actually performing the bigger one. Just like the people writing the computer that took us to the moon, I'm pretty sure they tried it before in small-scale simulations before hooking it up to the rocket and letting it go to the moon.
    - zepto 5y ago
      The idea that people need to treat financial transactions in crypto as if they were writing software for a moon mission shows how impractical the entire space is.
      - capableweb 5y ago
        If that was the case, I'd agree with you. But as outlined in the comments of this submission time and time again, it was not what happened here. The user was not doing a normal transfer (at least, they didn't want to, but they ended up doing). They didn't know what they were doing at all, a simply Google search would have showed them the way. Using UIs instead of interacting with the contract directly would have prevented them from making the mistake they did. Doing a small test transfer before doing the big one would have revealed what was wrong as well. It's not that I'm comparing writing software for moon missions with making cryptocurrency transactions. I was directly replying to mox1 implying that writing 100% correct code is impossible and shouldn't be attempted.
        ddingus 5y ago
        "simply Google search would have showed them the way" That is how high toxicity systems get made.
    - ddingus 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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