Topic: We need Alan/etotheipi (Armory) as a fulltime-developer! Now! (Read 3861 times)

please be more specific.  the only thing gmaxwell failed to explain to me, the rest of the community, and Sirius was why he assumed moral authority to exclude Ver and Matonis from the bitcoin.org press center.  the verdict is in on that issue; it was the wrong thing to do.

i'm just calling it like i see based on your run ins with others.  it's ok, i do the same thing.  i would actually like to see links to your concerns about Armory.  i vaguely recall some but not the specifics.

mind you, i don't fully trust Armory yet either which is why i haven't kept the majority of funds in this wallet as of yet.  but as far as i know, you're talking about security here and there has never been a stolen coin as a result of Armory.  no one has lost coins either due to bad programming.  it is a bit concerning that we had a 3 mo down time in Armory as a result of moving Alan's DB from RAM to HDD.  he fully admits to underestimating the growth of Bitcoin and it's DB.  but then so have you.

one thing i'd like to point out to you is how wrong you've been on Bitcoin in general since you started here.  you've been a bear criticizing the protocol since i first interacted with you back in 2011.  you spend an awful amount of time here given your bearishness.  why is that?  i coined the phrase "the geeks fail to understand that which they hath created" a while back to describe folks like you. does the fact that you may now be describing Bitcoin as "state of the art" mean you've had a change of heart? not trying to be mean or anything, just pointing out the facts.

Perfect.  This is how bitcoin grows.  Bringing fresh rock-star programmers into the community is the best thing possible for bitcoin.  I'm doing the same thing wherever I can.

BTW, I would be "up a creek" without Armory.  Cold storage in offline computers is the backbone of a few of my projects and you helped us get to market much more quickly and cheaply than would have been possible otherwise. 

Seriously...Thank you.  I plan on sending you a nice gift once we're in the black.

-T

Compressed Keys!

I have learned so much from your work on documenting transactions and scripts, I really believe you deserve it and you will do great things with it :-).

Indeed, the actual monetary system is kinda modern slavery.  I advocate for a ressource based economy, hope and work for this to happen in the lifetime of my kids..  I see bitcoin as an excellent start to begin the transition to this more human and ecological system...

well, i have to thank you for one thing.

your continued threats to steal my wallet have encouraged me to study up on Bitcoin security.  Armory has been a valuable tool to secure those same wallets.  last i checked my balances are still intact.

I'm +1ing this post as hard as I can.  Very excited to see what you're able to accomplish with these new resources.

Just to address 2112's comments... yes I classify as a "lone wolf" coder when it comes to Armory.  That doesn't mean I have never worked with other people or that other people don't like working with me.  It means that Bitcoin, and especially Armory is a complicated project, and few people have the right mix of skills, motivation, and free time to get involved in a project like this "for free".

At my previous job, I worked on a team of about 6 devs/engineers developing a massive physics simulation, which was in constant integration with the work of 3-4 teams of similar sizes.  The last few of those years, I was in charge of my own little sub-are of the project, with 2-3 coders working both under & parallel to me (I was the task lead while also being a task contributor).  

Starting this company and managing 3-4 developers is basically very similar to what I was doing before.  And real talent is being brought in, and paid well with good benefits to focus on Bitcoin full time.  These are guys that that don't have much knowledge about Bitcoin but are superstar programmers who will have no problem learning about Bitcoin.  If I had to limit myself to super-star Bitcoin programmers, I'd have very little choice -- if they're really good, they're probably already employed by another Bitcoin company.  Plus this has the benefit of bring more talent into the Bitcoin ecosystem, instead of just redistributing it.  I find that awesome developers are literally 5x more valuable than average ones, and I'd rather keep the team small than  fill it with mediocrity.  

Also, I don't think the "recent graduate" comment applies to me anymore.  I worked there for 7 years and had many leadership roles.  "Young" -- yes.  "Recent graduate", no.

You know, computer science is not a popularity contest. I think gmaxwell recently tried to explain this to you and failed, but in a slightly different context.

I wish the fuckedcompany.com site didn't crash and lose its discussion forum database. I would then just give you a links to the history of the California/Silicon Valley and the dotcom bubble. Those who don't know the history are condemned to repeat it. But because f-----company.com is now lost it is quite hard to show that history to the uninitiated.

It kinda doesn't matter wheter I'm a dick or a nice guy. I'm a computer scientist and that that is the only thing that should matter. Everything else is just a dressing, "social capital", "marketing",  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconnaissance_by_fire etc. But for you only things that matter are in the "everything else" category, you've already made a decision to not learn anything in the "computer science" category. One thing that you most definitely share with etotheipi is that you both are very emotional people, prone to thinking in the "us versus them" categories. But the subject here is cold and unemotional computer science, which really doesn't take sides.

I will repeat myself: no matter what you and etotheipi think about me right now, I wish him well. I do see him repeating simple mistakes that already have been made, but the documentation of those mistakes is gone with f-----company.com . I have not deleted or significantly edited any posts that I had made in etotheipi's threads. Anyone is free to search my posts for the mention of etotheipi and etotheipi's post for mentions of 2112 and make his own mind.

In the past, when I had to explain the above quoted concept to the non-scientists I had some success with using the following art analogy: imagine yourself having a choice to invest in Rembrand or Salvador Dali while they were still alive. Rembrand is well known for supervising painting by his pupils/apprentices and signing them only when they met his quality standards. On the other hand Salvador Dali is well known for signing the blank canvas and leaving painting to the random ghost-painters hired by the art merchants. It is completely unproductive do try to discuss which of the two painters was a better artist. What really matters to the investor is which one was better in the teamwork enterprise.

If you don't like painters analogy, try the film directors analogy with, say James Cameron and Michael Cimino.

But please remember that Bitcoin is not "art", although it may be used near the expressions like "state-of-the-art". Bitcoin (and its security) is cold and unemotional computer science.

Unfortunately, many times our greatest assets become our largest liabilities.

Just think of the average member of the 2009-2011 Bitcoin community: an IQ at least two standard deviations above the mean, highly technically and mathematically competent, economically and financially savvy, entrepreneurial, willing to take risks or experiment while accepting the consequences, incredible work ethic and very independent minded.

So, why should they take any advice or listen to anyone else? Most other people are dumber, less skilled and view the world in a much less effective way. And the financial scoreboard says so with the rise in Bitcoin's price.

If you think herding cats is hard then herding honey badgers, particularly if they have been financially successful, is infinitely worse.

But I am sure that as long as members of the community, and this applies just as much to Alan as anyone else, find competent mentors who are not stupid and then are willing to work hard and be teachable they will be extremely successful. We all have a lot to learn; the problem is finding someone to learn it from who is willing to invest the time to do it.

He is a core dev.
The project is called Armory :-P

Nah, I very much prefer it that way, Alan sticking to Armory!
We don't need more resources on bitcoin-qt, we need more independent clients!

Ente

why are you always such a dick about things?  do you always see negatives in ppl?  i've only heard the core devs complain about you, not him.

and how would you know anything about being difficult to work with in re: to Alan?  have you worked with him?  Alan has been a star in the community from a user's perspective as every other comment here and on Reddit will attest to.  and Armory stands apart from bitsofproof and sx by far.

i'm willing to bet that anyone who's anything in Bitcoin and needs a usable daily wallet for their biz uses Armory.  no question in my mind it's that useful.

it's quite possible that he's a lone wolf as you describe but many great ppl have ventured out on their own in many industries over time and accomplished great things.  sometimes other ppl hold them back.

Exactly that's where the problem starts: "being the lead developer". etotheipi was/is rather short-fused personality. The typical (at least 50/50) trajectory of such a startup is:

1) several iterations of of trying to work with peers and ending up with a quarrels and no new code produced
2) hiring servants/completely unskilled programmers that are very supplicative but produce very low quality software

But it is also possible that etotheipi will turn around and learn how to work with teams. 

Yeah, that is the question. The other competing full-node/wallet implementations are also written by lone wolfs:

A) bitsofproof by grau
B) sx by genjix

interesting perspective.  

otoh, he will probably be the lead dev within the hierarchy of Armory.  afterall, he wrote the thing.  and it is the best wallet out there while contributing to the community in a big way.  

where would we be without it?

I checked it out and was going to tell you but I see cypherdoc beat me to it.

My point was Armory can run it without having to have the second wallet open, it does still rely on running it in the background in the current version.

etotheipi is a fairly classic example of a "lone wolf" coder/programmer/software engineer. Adding money and co-worker/peer programmers into this situation quite often (at least 50/50) causes "pouring oil into the fire" situation.

On the other hand he's young (recent graduate) and may not be irreversibly set into that modus operandi.

Time will show...

Really! It can work now in online mode without Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind running in the background! I've got to check this out and update again. Thanks for letting me know.

no.

it still requires Bitcoin-qt with it's associated DB.

It hasn't required that for at least 3 or 4 months, although I've found it to be more stable running that way anyhow.   Some very cool things coming for armory, can't wait to dig into it.