Peter Todd [ARCHIVE] on Nostr: π Original date posted:2013-10-22 π Original message:On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at ...
π
Original date posted:2013-10-22
π Original message:On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 09:34:57AM +0200, Martin Sustrik wrote:
> On 22/10/13 09:03, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:59 PM, Jean-Paul Kogelman
> > <jeanpaulkogelman at me.com> wrote:
> >> Have you seen: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification ?
> >
> > Take care, the information in the wiki is woefully incomplete.
>
> Imagine myself, with no prior knowledge of Bitcoin looking at the
> document. It starts with "Hashes". What hashes? No idea what's going on.
> Etc.
>
> Now compare that to a well written RFC. It starts with introduction,
> description of the problem, explains the conceptual model of the
> solution, then dives into the details. There's also Security
> Considerations part in every RFC that is pretty relevant for Bitcoin.
>
> As I said, I am willing to help with writing such document, it would be
> a nice way of learning the stuff, however, help from core devs, such as
> answering question that may arise in the process, or reviewing the
> document would be needed.
Writing such RFCs is dangerous due to the consensus nature of Bitcoin -
it makes people think the standard is the RFC, rather than the code.
I hear one of the better intros to Bitcoin is the Khan academy videos,
but I've never watched them myself. Once you understand how it works,
start reading source code - the Bitcoin codebase is actually really
simple and readable. However remember that the implications of that
codebase are anything but simple; there's lots of reasons to think
Satoshi himself didn't understand Bitcoin all that well, even by the
time he left the project.
--
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
000000000000000f155e7a648e84a83589048ae1cacb0c60bfce2437553b6af4
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π Original message:On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 09:34:57AM +0200, Martin Sustrik wrote:
> On 22/10/13 09:03, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 11:59 PM, Jean-Paul Kogelman
> > <jeanpaulkogelman at me.com> wrote:
> >> Have you seen: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification ?
> >
> > Take care, the information in the wiki is woefully incomplete.
>
> Imagine myself, with no prior knowledge of Bitcoin looking at the
> document. It starts with "Hashes". What hashes? No idea what's going on.
> Etc.
>
> Now compare that to a well written RFC. It starts with introduction,
> description of the problem, explains the conceptual model of the
> solution, then dives into the details. There's also Security
> Considerations part in every RFC that is pretty relevant for Bitcoin.
>
> As I said, I am willing to help with writing such document, it would be
> a nice way of learning the stuff, however, help from core devs, such as
> answering question that may arise in the process, or reviewing the
> document would be needed.
Writing such RFCs is dangerous due to the consensus nature of Bitcoin -
it makes people think the standard is the RFC, rather than the code.
I hear one of the better intros to Bitcoin is the Khan academy videos,
but I've never watched them myself. Once you understand how it works,
start reading source code - the Bitcoin codebase is actually really
simple and readable. However remember that the implications of that
codebase are anything but simple; there's lots of reasons to think
Satoshi himself didn't understand Bitcoin all that well, even by the
time he left the project.
--
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
000000000000000f155e7a648e84a83589048ae1cacb0c60bfce2437553b6af4
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