The Wright Code (or not . . . maybe)

[Mr Felt]

How about Dr. Wright post some code he's written for another project so we can see how his coding style compares?  

I Wonder what Martti and Hearn think of all of this hoopla considering they had private correspondence with Satoshi way back when (in addition to collaborating on code)?

I wonder who all got invited to opine on the veracity of Dr. Wright's claim? If Hearn and Martti were not asked to opine on the evidence, or even Theymos, why not?  I believe Grigg works at R3 - surely Hearn has some info here.  Perhaps Hearn is Satoshi - he did coin the phrase SPV IIRC (according to him).
  
Back to the code comparison issue.  A code comparison is something I've been working on for a bit.  I'll share a little now.  If you look at the original bitcoin files, you will Satoshi liked to break up his code into chunks using both whitespace and comment blocks.  For many comment blocks, entire lines were filed w/ dashes to break up the code/to start and end a comment.  See here (just scroll through):

https://github.com/benjyz/bitcoinArchive/blob/master/nov08/main.cpp

I haven't seen any current developers break up their code blocks with this convention (and it is a convention, see #4 of first section here: https://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/manual/docblocks.html). Indeed, many of the original comment blocks have been removed.  I have not reviewed every Satoshi-suspect's code for similar codeblock comment borders, but I have looked at a lot of them.  Only one person I've found so far utilizes comment block borders like Satoshi did:

https://github.com/nicksz/jTime/blob/master/tests/c.html

[7788bitcoin]

The style of writing a code can actually be easily mimicked... No other better way to proof the identity of Satoshi thanhim signing the genesis block and move the coins (best if it is to my address!!!....)

[ebliever]

Keep your eye on the ball, folks. Let's not start getting distracted with secondary and tertiary arguments with ambiguous criteria, when very blunt, clear lines of evidence are available by which Satoshi can identify himself.

[gmaxwell]

There are rigid coding standards in core now, no one writes code there like they would on their own.

Left to my own devices, with no constraints I write code that looks like https://people.xiph.org/~greg/binomial_codec.c

...but you'd never see code that looked like that in Bitcoin Core.

It's quite easy to hide coding style in any case-- any senior developer has experience working in projects where they must adopt other people's preferred style.

[Mr Felt]

There are rigid coding standards in core now, no one writes code there like they would on their own.

Left to my own devices, with no constraints I write code that looks like https://people.xiph.org/~greg/binomial_codec.c

...but you'd never see code that looked like that in Bitcoin Core.

It's quite easy to hide coding style in any case-- any senior developer has experience working in projects where they must adopt other people's preferred style.

Fair and reasonable points/criticisms. 

To add - I think scrutinizing code, as well as code comments (think stylometrics, other text analysis), can only produce circumstantial evidence at best.  Cryptographic evidence might also be circumstantial if there are no direct witnesses to the key signing that can testify (without any risk of their testimony not being believed) to identities, whether a signature was under duress, etc.; but, its certainly wildly harder to fake (couldn't even try to quantify how hard).  Together, you've probably got best proof you can have and maybe a really interesting human story as well.  Thanks for the feedback. 

[Kakmakr]

In any way, you have to go back to the original code he wrote, because most of that was replaced with the latest code. Gavin used to say, Satoshi's code was sloppy and they re-wrote and cleaned up most of those mistakes. Over time, people adapt and change their code in any way, once they start working with groups and other people and they acquire new knowledge and skills.

It is not like handwriting recognition, where it can be interpreted and analyzed for certain patterns and ways people form their letters. ^smile^

[Gleb Gamow]

CSW wrote code to hack into a coffee pot connected to the Internet which its maker said can't be connected to the Internet in spite of said coffee pot model having Internet in its model name.

Read all about it: http://www.cnet.com/news/internet-connected-coffee-maker-has-security-holes/

[Mr Felt]

CSW wrote code to hack into a coffee pot connected to the Internet which its maker said can't be connected to the Internet in spite of said coffee pot model having Internet in its model name.

Read all about it: http://www.cnet.com/news/internet-connected-coffee-maker-has-security-holes/

yup.  wait 'til you find the articles about hacking electric toothbrushes or something or other related to dentistry . . . .

[YarkoL]

I'm starting to think it's likely that "Satoshi" was a ruse by a team
of anon cryptographers... They created a proof-of-concept
implementation written in Visual Studio that had some deliberate
flaws and holes, knowing very well that true geeks would pounce on it
and start to refine it.

Thus it would been conceived and nurtured in obscurity.