If you want to know why I hate the dev team and how they treat Bitcoin...

[Atlas]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/10wlva/so_how_long_until_the_bitcoinqt_diskio_tipping/

It's shit like this. They want every user to be a verifying node regardless of their technical proficiency and what the end user wants out of Bitcoin.

When a user complains about the program using excess resources while being verifying node, the devs and some others often strikeback with a sense of entitlement "You should help out. If you don't like it, leave. Come back when the tech is better."

The tech IS better guys. There are thin clients and ewallets that resolve this but you deride them and continue to work on a vision of software nobody wants. It's rather limiting for Bitcoin as a whole. Can you imagine how many people have dumped Bitcoin because Bitcoin-Qt/Bitcoind continues to be a slow, overburdened pain in the ass?

It's very clear: This desktop-based vision for Bitcoin is one of Autism and general lack of ingenuity.

[JoelKatz]

When the dev team starts rejecting patches that improve this problem, I'll join your complaint. When you have an all-volunteer project, it's pretty hard to set priorities.

[paulie_w]

since the foundation's creation, it isn't that anymore right?

i agree with op about this part.

[benjamindees]

I can't blame the devs for being a bit overly cautious.  They started off suggesting that users use online wallet services, and that was a spectacular failure.  There are good reasons for nodes to verify the blockchain independently.  There are good reasons to use a new address for each transaction.  These things aren't just the result of laziness or lack of care for the end-user.  I'm sure there will be some scalability improvements coming in the near future.  For a whole host of reasons, Bitcoin will just have to grow slowly.

[Atlas]

Can someone complaining about the reference client please point me to an alternative client that is capable of maintaining the Bitcoin network?

The reference client should just be on dedicated miners that get paid to do their job.

[Gabi]

I'm sorry Atlas but this time i do not agree. Bitcoin really rely on people running the full client. Yes, lightweight clients and online wallets (avoid them please unless you love losing money) exists but bitcoin is p2p, we need as more people as possible acting as nodes

[SkRRJyTC]

You spend all your time obsessed with Bitcoin, yet you claim to hate the very people who are responsible for its existence.

Take your hate elsewhere plzkthxbai.

[greyhawk]

At least we know whom to suspect when TBF gets a "THIS IS ANTHRAX. YOU DIE NOW. BITCOIN IS GREAT!" letter in the future.

[QuantumQrack]

Developers, i.e. programmers have no business trying to promote bitcoin to the masses.  They need to keep their asses out of that venue.  They need to be sitting in front of  a computer monitor coding away, chatting with their nerdy friends thinking of ways to better the client and/or process.

Also, the Bitcoin foundation needs female(s) involved, and also involved in the greater idea of bitcoin.  Females seem to be absent from this male dominated nerd-o-rama.

[greyhawk]

Developers, i.e. programmers have no business trying to promote bitcoin to the masses.  They need to keep their asses out of that venue.  They need to be sitting in front of  a computer monitor coding away, chatting with their nerdy friends thinking of ways to better the client and/or process.

I propose a compound with guard dogs, 2 feet thick concrete walls, laser cameras, electrified floors, CN gas. Also lots of mercenary guards, at least one specialist with a riot gun, also one each for machine gun and flamethrower, a boomerang equipped coward, also two androids. A Hind D and Tank would be useful. Nuclear capability by walking battle tank should be an option.

[Herodes]

bla bla bla bla.

I could use the ignore feature, and I will.

But Atlas, did you ever contribute in a productive manner to the bitcoin project ?

[Polvos]

Sorry Atlas, I'm not with you in this. I think we need relays for the transactions for security reasons. The users taht complain about the "weight" can always jump to the online wallets. I absolutely agree with de devs here.

[Richy_T]

I'm sorry Atlas but this time i do not agree. Bitcoin really rely on people running the full client. Yes, lightweight clients and online wallets (avoid them please unless you love losing money) exists but bitcoin is p2p, we need as more people as possible acting as nodes

Do we really though or do we just need "enough"? I would suspect that the number of nodes required probably goes as something of the square-root of number of users. As more users get on board, it might be possible to have the client back-off on how much work it actually does. Make it somewhat configurable maybe since some of us are happy to donate CPU time where others may not be so much. Admitedly it's early days to be getting to that level of sophistication but otherwise, most people will just end up on lightweight clients anyway.

Plus, excuse me but I'm not that deep into things yet. I currently run the client and the miner. Bitcoins assigned as transaction costs go to the mining side of things, correct (Though I'm thinking the pool operators probably keep that)? If running the client is essential for the functioning of the network, should there not be some kind of reward assigned there (other than the nice warm glow inside of course)?

I would not touch an online wallet except for special circumstances for very small sums. There are plenty of better alternatives.

[Pieter Wuille]

What makes you think we're not working very hard to deal with the increasing load?

Yes, we are conservative when it comes to modifying the reference code, and I think we should be.

That said, I've also spent more than a few weeks time already on rewriting the reference client's validation engine to be much more efficient. Without any compensation, by the way. I understand the decreasing performance is rapidly becoming an issue, and not seeing improvement must be frustrating. But please don't think we're ignorant. I'm not alone, of course. Mike helped by making Bitcoin run on top of LevelDB (instead of ancient BDB), which has much better performance, in particular on slow disks.

All this is finished and works. It just requires a massive amount of testing - we can't just switch to some faster code and hope that it behaves the same way. Even if it deviates from the old one in the tiniest way, we have a serious problem. This will take time to merge, and time is critical now. We're also just volunteers.

Anyway, expect 0.8 to be significantly faster than 0.7. I'm not talking about a few percent improvement. How much improvement will depend on a lot of factors, but I've done test runs (in idealized conditions) with full syncs in less than half an hour. In practice for most it will probably still be hours, but it shouldn't be days anymore.

Please, patience.

PS: I'm not on reddit.

[eb3full]

Atlas, it's not like you do anything but complain and write awful blog posts, you aren't a programmer and clearly don't understand what it's like to manage an open-source project like Bitcoin. You can't just throw code together based on every idea you see, there has to be a clear direction and the dev team is rightfully conservative about the changes they make.

Also "hate the dev team"? Why do you have to hate anyone, even if you profoundly disagree with them? There's nothing to indicate they're acting in bad faith.

[coinpeculiator]

When a user complains about the program using excess resources while being verifying node, the devs and some others often strikeback with a sense of entitlement "You should help out. If you don't like it, leave. Come back when the tech is better."

The tech IS better guys. There are thin clients and ewallets that resolve this but you deride them and continue to work on a vision of software nobody wants. It's rather limiting for Bitcoin as a whole. Can you imagine how many people have dumped Bitcoin because Bitcoin-Qt/Bitcoind continues to be a slow, overburdened pain in the ass?

It's very clear: This desktop-based vision for Bitcoin is one of Autism and general lack of ingenuity.

You're right that the client is slow, I run on an old linux netbook and it is very slow to open and process blocks for me, but I don't actually see a technical suggestion from you on how it should be improved.

Your suggestion that the software developers should do with their time as you wish is actually entitlement on your part not anyone elses. If you like other clients so much why don't you just use them, or at least say which ones you like and why (please include the end user benefit and what the underlying technical difference is that makes it better).

I don't really see how an end user can run a non-verifying node as it would seem to open them to attacks such as double spend. If you have a solution to that for non-verifying users I'd like to hear it.

[MysteryMiner]

Retards should not use computers. Use PayPal because it is a "thin client" for payments.

Each node should be verifying if it can. This protects network. It is a P2P currency after all. Even 2GHz Pentium 4 with 1GB of RAM have no problems with Bitcoin 0.4.1 running.

[FlipPro]

Atlas, it's not like you do anything but complain and write awful blog posts, you aren't a programmer and clearly don't understand what it's like to manage an open-source project like Bitcoin. You can't just throw code together based on every idea you see, there has to be a clear direction and the dev team is rightfully conservative about the changes they make.

Also "hate the dev team"? Why do you have to hate anyone, even if you profoundly disagree with them? There's nothing to indicate they're acting in bad faith.

+1

[ElectricMucus]

Learn programming Atlas.

[acoindr]

First point: regarding Atlas posts and associated content, whether you agree or disagree and regardless of his style I think you have to respect his or anybody's concern for Bitcoin. Where would Bitcoin be if people didn't care about it? Nowhere. And everybody is capable of contributing something - it's not all programming. People are different. Not everybody contributes/behaves the same way, and that's actually a strength.

That said, I have to agree with the devs course on this. Bitcoin has to be functional first and foremost or nothing else matters. It's not that the devs don't want the best possible user experience, it's that they have to address technical challenges by priority to keep things working. As experts on doing just that it's hard to challenge any dev decision without offering a specific viable alternative.

I do like getting such concerns out for discussion, though. That's healthy, because that's sometimes how inventive solutions can be found.

I'm sorry Atlas but this time i do not agree. Bitcoin really rely on people running the full client. Yes, lightweight clients and online wallets (avoid them please unless you love losing money) exists but bitcoin is p2p, we need as more people as possible acting as nodes

Do we really though or do we just need "enough"? I would suspect that the number of nodes required probably goes as something of the square-root of number of users. As more users get on board, it might be possible to have the client back-off on how much work it actually does. Make it somewhat configurable maybe since some of us are happy to donate CPU time where others may not be so much. Admitedly it's early days to be getting to that level of sophistication but otherwise, most people will just end up on lightweight clients anyway.

Plus, excuse me but I'm not that deep into things yet. I currently run the client and the miner. Bitcoins assigned as transaction costs go to the mining side of things, correct (Though I'm thinking the pool operators probably keep that)? If running the client is essential for the functioning of the network, should there not be some kind of reward assigned there (other than the nice warm glow inside of course)?

I would not touch an online wallet except for special circumstances for very small sums. There are plenty of better alternatives.

I love seeing valuable comments like this from users with low post counts. It means things are growing, including human resources available to Bitcoin. I think you're right about backing off the full client as user adoption grows. Really, with Bitcoin everything gets easier once tons of people use it, because more resources of all forms are available to contribute to its success.