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From: Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>
To: Martin Sustrik <sustrik@250bpm.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Development <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Revisiting the BIPS process, a proposal
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 03:49:41 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20131022074941.GB3452@savin> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <52662AA1.5050509@250bpm.com>

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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@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
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  reply	other threads:[~2013-10-22  7:50 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-10-21 14:30 [Bitcoin-development] Revisiting the BIPS process, a proposal Jeff Garzik
2013-10-21 14:34 ` Jeff Garzik
2013-10-21 15:46   ` Andreas Schildbach
2013-10-21 16:14     ` Jeff Garzik
2013-10-21 17:17 ` Jeff Garzik
2013-10-21 19:38   ` Jean-Paul Kogelman
2013-10-21 19:47     ` Luke-Jr
2013-10-21 20:57       ` Benjamin Cordes
2013-10-21 20:59       ` Benjamin Cordes
2013-10-22  6:39       ` Martin Sustrik
2013-10-22  6:59         ` Jean-Paul Kogelman
2013-10-22  7:03           ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-10-22  7:34             ` Martin Sustrik
2013-10-22  7:49               ` Peter Todd [this message]
2013-10-22  7:56               ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-10-22  8:20                 ` Martin Sustrik
2013-10-22 14:08               ` Jeff Garzik
2013-10-23  7:38                 ` Martin Sustrik
2013-10-23 19:40                   ` Peter Todd
2013-10-23 20:05                     ` Martin Sustrik
2013-10-23 20:27                       ` Peter Todd
2013-10-23 21:07                         ` Pieter Wuille
2013-10-23 21:42                           ` Allen Piscitello
2013-10-23 21:49                             ` Luke-Jr
2013-10-24  7:03                           ` Martin Sustrik
2013-10-24 10:39                             ` Jeff Garzik
2013-10-24 11:11                             ` Christian Decker
2013-10-24 19:43                               ` Jeremy Spilman
2013-11-19 16:32 ` Wladimir
2013-11-19 16:53   ` Drak
2013-11-19 17:01     ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-11-19 17:07       ` Drak
2013-11-19 17:45       ` Wladimir
2013-11-19 17:54         ` Gregory Maxwell
2013-11-19 17:06   ` Peter Todd
     [not found]     ` <CA+s+GJA=p+yvoJqUAMQQRcfYK1B8eMVSJDWaXW8o+X5dzCXkdA@mail.gmail.com>
2013-11-19 17:21       ` [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: " Wladimir

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