I don't use Objective-C++, I hate the existing code and wouldn't know where to start implementing an alternative UI with the tangle of the current code.

A C library would do wonders for helping programmers make use of it.

Is this possible? To use the same wallet on multiple devices without needing to trust an online service to hold the wallet data. Can copies of the same wallet synchronise across various devices? Are there clever ways to do this, perhaps synchronising by analysing the blocks to calculate changes to the wallet that has occurred from other devices?

Simply curious because that would improve bitcoin a lot in my opinion.

By magic?

The question is, is the growth of the price of bitcoin fuelled by speculators?

Answer that as "no" and you probably feel quite safe buying bit coins for speculation. Answer that as "yes" or "I don't know" and you should be weary of buying bit coins for speculation.

AKA. anarchist?

I've come to believe statism is just slavery. I've always believed in freedom in many aspects and as I've progressed it's become clearer, the status quo must go.

I voted for anarcho-capitalism, though I think terms like voluntaryism are nicer sounding to outsiders. A bit like how progressivism isn't progressive but people think it must be because of the name. People are that stupid. The difference is that voluntaryism is actually about the name; it's about voluntary action between individuals.

@bluecmd: Very nice. I took a look at what has been done. The one conflict with my idea is the platform incompatibilities. You have so far been implementing the network side of bitcoin which is platform-specific.

I do think it would be best to create a core library which is standard c and then allow the programmer using the core library to add platform-specific code with delegate functions. There could be UNIX, Windows, whatever libraries built on top of the core library. A layered approach would increase the portability of the underlying layers.

From what I can tell, the main things which standard c can't provide and that bit coin need are threads and sockets. Am I right? It can't be too difficult for the user of the core library to add delegate functions which provide basic interface to threads and sockets.

Unfortunately the help I can give is limited since I do not understand bitcoin technically and doubt I ever will. Being good with C++ would help me understand the current source but I'm not good with C++. I may be able to aid in certain areas.

@mrenouf: A Java implementation would be good. Of-course a C library could still be used on Android with the NDK and the machine code should handle the performance intensive parts of bitcoin better. But a Java implementation in general would be great for many people I'm sure. Not for my iOS apps since I use Objective-C for that. Please don't port it back to C++ though! 

I will be glad to make Objective-C classes based on a C library if one was made, as I said. Then I can easily make bitcoin applications for Mac and iOS.

So does that mean you are a socialist? Socialists supporting bitcoins?

I didn't do the test, I just put the graph how it should be for me:



As long as that means full civil and economic liberties.

Your idea to use Haskell or ocaml for a reference implementation is probably a good idea. 

But I would still like to see a c library very much indeed. So much could be done with a simple c library.

Government is a rather recent invention on the human time scale. Humans began using government as a system of control. It benefits few people but most people support it. Governments are really just big mafias. Governments don't create civilisation. Civilisation and governments don't mix. At the very least governments are a stage of civilisation before humans eventually create a society where we deal with each other freely, voluntarily and for our own selfish but rational desires.

I thought the purpose was to use it for the unix operating system and find a better way to program operating systems in general.


That was an example. If bitcoin would ever become a properly used currency it needs to be more than a thing you use on your desktop computer.

It's hard to even make clients for mobile devices at the moment. That's what led me here, I wanted to make an iOS client for bitcoin but I can't when it's like how it is today.

My opinion is that it is rational to buy when the price is low and you expect it to go up and sell when the price is high and you expect it to go down.

Since I expect bitcoin to be in a massive speculative bubble right now, I would expect the price to crash at some point. Investing in bubbles is a bad idea in my opinion. I would not buy bitcoins for speculation and I would sell if I held any for speculation.

It is unwise to see a graph which has had major price rises and you expect it to continue simply from extrapolation. This thinking causes bubbles to inflate faster until it bursts.

If you will trade in bit coin, trade over very short periods, is what seems sensible to me.

More so than C? And there's no reason why you can't make safe code in C. You could (and perhaps should) have multiple implementations of bit coin. I suggest having a C implementation would be beneficial, especially more so than C++.

Why would you want to embed the library? So you can easily spread bitcoin over many devices and encourage innovation in the use of bitcoin.

You still need to compile or interpret the code on different platforms. C is widely accepted among platforms. In the future there may even be bitcoin software on microcontrollers where people can make bitcoin payments with card readers where their wallet information is encrypted on a card (You wouldn't store all the money on a card in case you lost it of-course and this is just an example).

Also, I was looking into making an objective-c implementation of bitcoin but I can't do that with the current state of the software. If there was a c library, I could make objective-c classes for bitcoin and use it to make Mac and iOS bitcoin clients with Apple's APIs.

I'm not clever enough to convert the bitcoin code and don't use C++. I wouldn't be mentally equipped to make a c library, only propose it as an idea.

The point?

Hello. 

I was talking about bitcoin on the development irc channel last night. I was asking about various things relating to making a bitcoin client for mobile devices. People on the channel seemed to support my thoughts that the bitcoin source code needs to be improved a lot.

I like bitcoin and I would like it to spread. For it to be spread, it needs to be easily accessible for programmers to use and apply it to various devices. I have a proposal for a new way of organising the bitcoin software using a C library.

The current bitcoin source code contains the code for the entire bitcoin client. The back-end needs to be completely separated from the UI and platform specific parts. Using a library which programmers can include in their projects and easily attach to their UI code, makes much more sense.

Bitcoin requires platform specific code. I'm not fully aware of what it requires exactly. Obviously, it needs access to the internet through irc sockets.

I suggest the library does not implement platform specific code and instead requires the user to implement functions. The user can send function pointers to bitcoin which do some of the platform specific work. For example, bitcoin may need to send a message though an IRC socket. The programmer can implement a function which takes an ID argument and a data argument and sends it over the socket (defined by the ID allowing multiple socket objects, if needed) using the platform specific APIs. This way bitcoin is as portable as possible without anyone needing to modify the library, only understand how to use it. Function pointers are a sensible way to do this. Function pointers could also be used for event handling (Events for receiving bit coins etc.).

Bitcoin is currently written in C++. I think this is a poor choice. C is more popular than C++ according to surveys (http://langpop.com/) and is generally more portable. C++ programmers can easily use it and programmers using other C based languages like Objective-C and C# can also integrate C. C can easily be accessed by other languages on many platforms. While C++ is also widely portable, C is a better alternative offering ultimate portability. C is widely used on many processor architectures. If bitcoin was ever to make it's way into a variety of devices and products, C is the best way to go.

A C++ wrapper would be lovely but the fundamental library should be in C. The library should be done in standard C of-course, only using libraries that are portable with standard c.

To conclude my proposal is to separate the back-end code for bit-coin into a C library which can be used by programmers to easily create bitcoin applications, removing all UI and platform specific code from the core library.

What do people think about this?