Bitcoin Core So Slow - Need more than autism for bitcoin to work

[randominf]

I'll just start out by pointing out that autism is heavily represented in the coding community.

Normal people, unlike autistics who have special relationships with their computers, do not get off on the idea that their computer and other people's computers are somewhere off in the ether computing hashes and verifying encryption together.

For Bitcoin to work, it needs to work, and although to an autistic the idea that the sync takes a week means that Bitcoin is working and that the computer is working really hard, to any other normal human not afflicted with autism, this is NOT working.  To sit at 10 days behind in sync for an entire day is NOT working.

I realize that autistics have a very difficult time understanding or relating to normal human psychology.  But you all must realize that a week-long sync mentally registers as NOT working to a normal human.  It destroys confidence and credibility in Bitcoin, despite all of the other autistic stuff about how much computer power is required to break encryption and how secure it is etc etc.

Normal people know about progress bars and they know about their internet speed, and they know that they can get a 10GB HD movie off of itunes (or even torrents for the more advanced normal people) in less than an hour.  20GB is not a large amount of data and most normal people know that you should be able to download that in an hour or two.  For it to take a week on Bitcoin Core registers as Bitcoin being so incredibly slow that it is not usable.  The details don't matter.  It either works or it doesn't, and a 20GB download/sync that requires a week is NOT working...in any other software package, it would be dismissed outright.

I am sure that, say, Microsoft for example, employs lots of autistic programmers/software engineers.  And if that was all that Microsoft ever employed, we would still be typing at the black cmd window.  And if that were the case, we would have never had Microsoft.  Now I am sure that many of you autistics are guffawing right now because this is precisely what you think - that we should indeed still be typing at black command windows and judging the performance of an algorithm by your intimate familiarity of the sound of the CPU fan, instead of a progress bar.  Well I hate to have to break it, still, here in 2014, to the autistic software engineers, but normal people don't give a shit about how or why computers and code works, they just want it TO work so that they can do OTHER work...work that autistics don't understand, like software management.  Microsoft did more than hire autistic programmers, it hired normal mentally healthy people - managers and QA people, etc., to make sure that their autistic software could at least, for the most part, be used productively by the general population. 

And now think about that: if it took a week to install MS Word, or Windows XP, etc., would people buy into that?  Would a normal, healthy, non-autistic person, enjoy waiting a week for MS Word to install?  Would it give them confidence in the software?  It wouldn't matter if MS Word made you coffee and ham and eggs once you got it installed...it wouldn't matter how good it was advertised to be...because you can make yourself all those things 7 times over by the time MS Word gets working.  It doesn't matter that it works once it's working - god forbid you have to backup your work and re-install your OS, or upgrade to a new computer.  No normal person wants in the back of their mind the looming threat of being unable to write anything for a week because it takes 7 days to install MS Word.   An autistic programmer however thinks that's great because they love that they get to watch their computer sit there and whir and crunch and heat up the room for a week - the thought that bits are flipping and increasing the entropy of the room while decreasing the entropy of the hard disk (a little less so) is totally erotic to the autistic software engineer computer nerd.

Look I know that the autistic programmers for Bitcoin have very little comprehension in the way of normal human psychology.  And so what I'm letting you know is that Bitcoin will never penetrate outside of the autistic computer-addicted community, and that this will eventually be its downfall.  The downfall of Bitcoin will not be anything to do with its internal software - it will be entirely due to its intrinsic autism and its inability to relate to normal human psychology.  Psychology is what will kill Bitcoin.

It is an abnormality, in this day and age...an abnormality, to wait for ANYTHING for a week, let alone something on your computer, that amounts to the size of two games, or two 1080p movie files off of iTunes or torrents.  It is abnormal.  Bitcoin has to do better than an autistic relationship with your computer.

[kingama]

I'm not sure what you're talking about with all the autism references. Bitcoin Core does a tough and important job with the now semi-large blockchain. That being said, you can use other clients like Electrum or Multibit on desktop or Mycelium on Android. Or you can setup a blockchain.info wallet in a few seconds. None of those require as much time investment and are perfectly acceptable starting points.

[Brewins]

Like said, you can have Multibit or others wallets that sinc in seconds, or online wallets. 

Core is important for constant transactions and mining, and other advanced stuff, thing that normal users won't be interested.

[futureazy]

I use a lighweight wallet too (Multibit), works great and it's already synced.

[InwardContour]

Another solution, if you really want to use bitcoin core, could be buying an usb flashcard with the blockchain previously
downloaded into it, there are some users who are selling them in the market section.

[ranochigo]

In order for Bitcoin to be decentralized, we need a public blockchain and each one should have a copy of it. The fact that it is slow is because it needs to verify each block individuality, since it downloads the blockchain from the peers, you cannot guarantee the network connection of your peers is fast. Bitcoin node have its advantage by offering the features and does help the bitcoin network. It is mostly only for developers who needs all the full features or people who want to help the network by running a full node. You can always use a lightweight wallet if you prefer a less feature software.

[kittycatbtc]

Im half autist and I agree with all of this. You are forced to wait a shitload of time (and you better have shit tones of ram too) or you are forced to decrease your security by using third party wallets.

[ranochigo]

Im half autist and I agree with all of this. You are forced to wait a shitload of time (and you better have shit tones of ram too) or you are forced to decrease your security by using third party wallets.

You aren't forced to do any of this. Wallets are usually open sourced, which means that you can compile it yourself and ensure there are no viruses, some of them offer more options than bitcoin core and their interface may be better. You can buy one of those blockchain downloads which speeds it up greatly. You do not need a lot of ram. Honestly, I would be surprised you are here if you only have 1GB of ram, you can hardly run much programs.

[minerpumpkin]

I use a lighweight wallet too (Multibit), works great and it's already synced.

I actually gotta say that MultiBit takes quite some time with multiple wallets, two handful of addresses, and some transaction!

[bitsmichel]

For Bitcoin to work, it needs to work, and although to an autistic the idea that the sync takes a week means that Bitcoin is working and that the computer is working really hard, to any other normal human not afflicted with autism, this is NOT working.  To sit at 10 days behind in sync for an entire day is NOT working.

You can use a normal wallet, like Electrum or Multibit and use bitcoin within 5 minutes, it doesn't take 10 days to start.
Many people from around the world are using Bitcoin, it's not just a geek thing anymore - and you forget the fact that bitcoin is now a billion dollar economy.

I am sure that, say, Microsoft for example, employs lots of autistic programmers/software engineers.  And if that was all that Microsoft ever employed, we would still be typing at the black cmd window.  And if that were the case, we would have never had Microsoft.  Now I am sure that many of you autistics are guffawing right now because this is precisely what you think - that we should indeed still be typing at black command windows and judging the performance of an algorithm by your intimate familiarity of the sound of the CPU fan, instead of a progress bar.  Well I hate to have to break it, still, here in 2014, to the autistic software engineers, but normal people don't give a shit about how or why computers and code works, they just want it TO work so that they can do OTHER work...work that autistics don't understand, like software management.  Microsoft did more than hire autistic programmers, it hired normal mentally healthy people - managers and QA people, etc., to make sure that their autistic software could at least, for the most part, be used productively by the general population.

Great programmers are usually not autistic, simply because you need to understand all of the customers wishes - they are usually in other areas. It's in fact a profession that deals with a lot of humans.

As for the GUI, that was not initiated by Microsoft.. it was an evolution were many companies were investing including Apple and NeXT. 

[Lorenzo]

I use Electrum. I know a lot of people say that in the future, the average person will be using thin/light clients such as Electrum and MultiBit and only those who need the entire blockchain will be running a full node. But then again, if Internet speeds and storage densities increase at a fast enough rate, isn't it also possible that everyone could run a full node? As long as the blockchain doesn't grow too fast? I'm thinking long term here.

[minerpumpkin]

I use Electrum. I know a lot of people say that in the future, the average person will be using thin/light clients such as Electrum and MultiBit and only those who need the entire blockchain will be running a full node. But then again, if Internet speeds and storage densities increase at a fast enough rate, isn't it also possible that everyone could run a full node? As long as the blockchain doesn't grow too fast? I'm thinking long term here.

The Blockchain will grow exponentially faster, if the Bitcoin adoption continues! Also, people switch to mobile devices that rely on cloud computing and decentralized storage. They don't have a lot of persistent memory anymore. It wouldn't make sense to store a whole blockchain on a portable device and having it constantly synced with the network!

[Crossbow376]

Im half autist and I agree with all of this. You are forced to wait a shitload of time (and you better have shit tones of ram too) or you are forced to decrease your security by using third party wallets.

Not really IMO.
If you use an offline (setup and manage without internet connection) Electrum wallet, your wallet is indeed even safer than using bitcoin core.