Theoretical situation

[tmbp]

What if we would take YOU right now and put you back to 2004, would you be able to rewrite the the original Satoshi client?

It really got me thinking, how genius was Satoshi? would the majority of us be able to recreate it flawlessly (or perhaps a little differently) from our own understanding of how the network works before witnessing Satoshis work and the great heights it achieved?

I think I could tackle it with a high level language such as C#, explain it in code with my own words essentially.

[will1982]

Nope, I really suck at coding. Barely know anything. However, if you magically put C or something into my head, I guess I could do a mediocre job of recreating the client.

[pedrog]

Nop!

But I would be among the first people running it in 2009.

[acoindr]

Satoshi was/is certainly a genius (assuming he is one guy). He said he sort of did things backwards writing the whitepaper, as he coded everything up first to convince himself he could solve all problems.

He was obviously very technical as you would not only need to understand programming well, but also have a real grasp of networking. On top of that he then understood cryptography well enough to know it was strong enough to literally support a monetary system, and also understood math well enough to know the implications of a planet's population running through private keys for use was not a problem.

With all of that he then designed the block chain for decentralized accountability, proof of work for arbitration, sketched out scalability solutions then put everything into practice. For anyone that's ever been an entrepreneur or excelled in sports you know many dream but few do because the former is quite easy. Last but not least he, along with other core developers, wrote what an industry security expert called on of the most well written and secure pieces of networking software he had seen, from scratch.

So did Satohi do a lot? Yeah.

[BTC4Victory]

I'm not a programmer, so from my own standpoint I'd need to spend a fair amount of time learning how to code before I could begin to sit down and write the client.

But, I think what's remarkable about what Satoshi did is less about the elegance or quality of the code itself -- rather, it's the intuitive leap he made before he even sat down and starting translating his bold new idea into code.  I think this article/blog post by Forbes contributor Timothy B. Lee back in mid April (just after the crash) really nails the way I feel about it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/17/why-programmers-are-excited-about-bitcoin/

Cryptographically secure digital cash isn’t a new idea; it’s a straightforward application of public key cryptography. But until Bitcoin, all digital cash schemes were hobbled by a reliance on an intermediary to handle the double spending problem.

Before 2009, truly decentralized digital cash was in the same intellectual category as public key cryptography was in before 1976. Programmers knew that it was a theoretical possibility, and that it would have revolutionary implications if it could be made to work. But no one had figured out how to build a practical system.

I think this explains a difference I’ve noticed in the way programmers and non-programmers react when they first learn about Bitcoin. Many people in both categories initially greet it with skepticism—certainly I did. But the nature of their skepticism is different. Non-programmers simply don’t see what the fuss is about. They see little difference between Bitcoin and conventional payment systems like PayPal. Programmers, on the other hand, immediately see that Bitcoin would have have revolutionary implications. It just takes time to convince them that Bitcoin lives up to the hype.

[GoldSilverBitcoin]

I could manage the SEO/Blog.

[hathmill]

Lets say I was skilled enough... Would I then also be able to just leave the project and it was starting to take of? And not spend any of those early coins? I admire the emotional discipline that S. had/have. Actually to the extent that I think that S. was hit by a buss or that he is a group of people working at a lab deep down subsurface inn antartica financed by north korea and denmark. Or perhaps S. has aschberger syndrom or something else that renders him as emotionally fit and diciplined as he was smart. Crazy.

[Melbustus]

Yes.

But that's likely the answer of any competent programmer who's studied bitcoin. Having the benefit of seeing that it's possible, reading the white paper several times, researching and thinking about bitcoin, both on a technical and economic level for years, coding against parts of it, seeing the ecosystem develop.....that makes it pretty doable to replicate for a competent and determined software developer.

Satoshi's breakthrough was solving the Byzantine Generals' Problem with his novel blockchain-consensus methodology. We now know how to do that, and that's the intellectually hard part. The other stuff boils down to solid well-thought-through (and far-sighted) design choices combined with meticulous edge-case handling. Not easy, but not the same level of genius by any stretch.