Who is the Last BTC developer left standing?

[btc-room101]

I see this technical board has really gone to zilch, nada anymore

Has all the dev's quit? Moved on, has everybody moved on to crypt 2.0, 3.0 projects? & left the btc dinosaur?

Really got to know, especially the problem here is when you do post real info, the mod's always delete, the fantasy of btc mythology must be protected at all costs, even though only a few bots remain.

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[achow101]

All the developers moved on to other forums for discussion because Bitcointalk is full of spam and nonsense.

[icopress]

All the developers moved on to other forums for discussion because Bitcointalk is full of spam and nonsense.

I honestly do not quite agree with your statement ... since spam can be anywhere, but not in the Development & Technical Discussion sections, Mining, Bitcoin Technical Support. In addition, just don't say that you, as a pretty influential person, have no influence on other developers .. I mean, why don't you and gmaxwell just create a public but private section (section for developers only).

[hatakeyudu]

Bitcoin Core developers can discuss in https://bitcoincore.org/en/contribute

They can do private discussions with each other and don't need a secret board in this forum.

[NotATether]

why don't you and gmaxwell just create a public but private section (section for developers only).

Because the linuxfoundation mailing list and IRC are much easier to communicate in for avoiding non-devs making irrelevant comments about Github patches which they otherwise have no stake in.

[icopress]

Because the linuxfoundation mailing list and IRC are much easier to communicate in for avoiding non-devs making irrelevant comments about Github patches which they otherwise have no stake in.

It was a rhetorical question in the spirit of the openness of our community ... and as for me, LML is an outdated way of communication that has not been suitable for modern realities for a long time, so either something needs to be changed or in the end we will have a gang of old school b'developers.

[NotATether]

LML is an outdated way of communication that has not been suitable for modern realities for a long time, so either something needs to be changed or in the end we will have a gang of old school b'developers.

I get your point but here's the thing about deciding about which platform you want to use. There are projects who are successfully collaborating with Slack or Microsoft Teams, and good for them and all, but it becomes very hard to migrate everyone to a different communications medium once you get everyone to start using one.

The problem is you must somehow get every developer to make an account on the different platform and surely that isn't going to happen unless the reason for doing so is some catastrophic downtime (think ransomware or an OVH datacenter burning down) which knocks out the old platform.

Hence, why most companies still use email as their internal communication versus something like Zoom for example.


According to contributor stats on Github there are 99 devs with at least 10 commits so we're not really in danger of no new devs joining.

[a.a]

[...] avoiding non-devs making irrelevant comments [...]

This is so true...

[OgNasty]

All the developers moved on to other forums for discussion because Bitcointalk is full of spam and nonsense.

There’s no shortage of internet forum pros drenching this place with irrelevant drama and misinformation while telling everyone else how to act though. You’d think the bitcointalk trust network is more important than Bitcoin project development, which I guess to those that exist in the Bitcoin community only as a poster here, it is.

[achow101]

I mean, why don't you and gmaxwell just create a public but private section (section for developers only).

Making a private section would be against the ethos of FOSS. It would literally be a "gang of old school b'developers" that you claim we will end up with without "changes". Making a private section that only an approved list of people are allowed to post in makes it almost impossible to get new people to join.

The goal is to create an environment where the barrier of entry is high enough to stop spam, but low enough that anyone who actually cares can still join. IRC channels and mailing lists appear to be pretty close to meeting those requirements. They require people to be able to read documentation and be able to use a computer well enough to download and use an IRC client or send an email to an email address. But the barrier of entry isn't so low that anyone can just make an account and shitpost in every thread on the forum.

Making an account on some website is a process everyone is familiar with today, so the barrier of entry is super low.

Even with the mailing list, sending emails is a low barrier of entry, so the mailing list does get quite a bit of noise and nonsense, but it's not nearly as bad as on this forum.

IRC is a bit of a higher barrier of entry, but really not that high and we do get many new developers joining.

LML is an outdated way of communication that has not been suitable for modern realities for a long time, so either something needs to be changed or in the end we will have a gang of old school b'developers.

This statement just really shows to me how much you have no idea what the state of open source Bitcoin development is. In the past couple of years, we have had a huge surge in the number of people contributing to Bitcoin Core. It's clear the joining an IRC channel, sending emails to a mailing list, and making a github account are not very high barriers of entry. Many new developers are fairly young and are not what I would classify as "old school".

[mk4]

Not every developer uses Bitcointalk just like how not every Bitcoiner uses Bitcointalk. There are other communities outside of Bitcointalk such as Reddit and Twitter.

If you're curious about who the contributors are: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors

^And that doesn't even include people building other software such as layer-2s like Lightning and privacy software like Wasabi and Samourai.

[ABCbits]

I mean, why don't you and gmaxwell just create a public but private section (section for developers only).

Making a private section would be against the ethos of FOSS. It would literally be a "gang of old school b'developers" that you claim we will end up with without "changes". Making a private section that only an approved list of people are allowed to post in makes it almost impossible to get new people to join.

How about new section which similar with "Development & Technical Discussion" but,
1. Disable signature (just like Serious Discussion board).
2. More strict moderation (even as geek, i find "Development & Technical Discussion" moderation is quite lax).

[NotATether]

How about new section which similar with "Development & Technical Discussion" but,
1. Disable signature (just like Serious Discussion board).
2. More strict moderation (even as geek, i find "Development & Technical Discussion" moderation is quite lax).

Or just disable sigs on this board altogether.

I personally have no problem with that and it's not going to stop me from posting here for example...

Edit: Apparently this thread was moved to meta, this comment was referring to dev&tech board.

[mediaBuzz]

I mean, why don't you and gmaxwell just create a public but private section (section for developers only).

Making a private section would be against the ethos of FOSS. It would literally be a "gang of old school b'developers" that you claim we will end up with without "changes". Making a private section that only an approved list of people are allowed to post in makes it almost impossible to get new people to join.

How about new section which similar with "Development & Technical Discussion" but,
1. Disable signature (just like Serious Discussion board).
2. More strict moderation (even as geek, i find "Development & Technical Discussion" moderation is quite lax).

Or a special rank. People with that rank would be able to create threads and only users with the same rank would comment on that thread, publicly seen to everyone but commendable only for users with a "technician" (or smth else) rank.

[DooMAD]

I see this technical board has really gone to zilch, nada anymore

Are you finding that trolling the general Bitcoin Discussion forum is unfulfilling?  Looking for a greater challenge, are we?  Somewhere more prestigious to disrupt?  Aww, too bad.

It's because of people like you that the overall quality of the forum is dragged ever downwards, causing the activity levels of the technical subforum to dwindle, as those who used to frequent it are now seeking the exchange of ideas in less hostile environments.  Places which you aren't taking a steaming shit in.

[vv181]

Or a special rank. People with that rank would be able to create threads and only users with the same rank would comment on that thread, publicly seen to everyone but commendable only for users with a "technician" (or smth else) rank.

I don't think it would be beneficial. How should the member achieve that "special rank"? by requiring a minimum or some requirement? I think it will be limiting discussion for a new or some btt members that genuinely interested in some particular topics on that board.

[shahzadafzal]

All the developers moved on to other forums for discussion because Bitcointalk is full of spam and nonsense.

You are absolutely right... and it's seems very true what you said and shocking at the same time.

Below is the list of top #20 contributors (from 796 total contributors) of bitcoin on github https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors.

I did not find any one among top 10 on bitcointalk except you (achow101) and in those top 20s only you are the active member.

I used the forum search members page to find these users, may be some users are present but with different names. Still this is so unfortune to see top developers are not present here and how the creators of bitcoin like Satoshi and Hal Finney were actively participating on this forum.

#1	laanwj	not found
#2	MarcoFalke	not found
#3	sipa	not found
#4	practicalswift	not found
#5	jnewbery	not found
#6	TheBlueMatt	not found
#7	hebasto	not found
#8	fanquake	not found
#9	theuni	not found
#10	achow101	found, Last Active: Today at 07:25:20PM
#11	jonasschnelli	found, Last Active: October 17, 2019
#12	gavinandresen	found, Last Active: March 03, 2021
#13	luke-jr	found, Last Active: May 14, 2021
#14	ryanofsky	not found
#15	jonatack	not found
#16	dongcarl	not found
#17	promag	not found
#18	sdaftuar	not found
#19	non-github-bitcoin	not found
#20	morcos	not found

Edit:
List updated here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5338945.msg57077625#msg57077625

[Quickseller]

All the developers moved on to other forums for discussion because Bitcointalk is full of spam and nonsense.

The forum is really not the best venue for development of software. A venue such as GitHub is really better that can track things such as Issues and improvement requests (pull requests). GH doesn’t have the ability to track things such as BIPs, but the Dev mailing list is a good venue to discuss these. If receiving emails from the Dev mailing list, you can pretty easily filter out messages from people who you don’t want to talk to, can filter so you only receive messages from who you believe are experts, and there is not the same incentive to write many messages/posts.

[achow101]

You are absolutely right... and it's seems very true what you said and shocking at the same time.

Below is the list of top #20 contributors (from 796 total contributors) of bitcoin on github https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/graphs/contributors.

I did not find any one among top 10 on bitcointalk except you (achow101) and in those top 20s only you are the active member.

I used the forum search members page to find these users, may be some users are present but with different names. Still this is so unfortune to see top developers are not present here and how the creators of bitcoin like Satoshi and Hal Finney were actively participating on this forum.

#1	laanwj	not found
#2	MarcoFalke	not found
#3	sipa	not found
#4	practicalswift	not found
#5	jnewbery	not found
#6	TheBlueMatt	not found
#7	hebasto	not found
#8	fanquake	not found
#9	theuni	not found
#10	achow101	found, Last Active: Today at 07:25:20PM
#11	jonasschnelli	found, Last Active: October 17, 2019
#12	gavinandresen	found, Last Active: March 03, 2021
#13	luke-jr	found, Last Active: May 14, 2021
#14	ryanofsky	not found
#15	jonatack	not found
#16	dongcarl	not found
#17	promag	not found
#18	sdaftuar	not found
#19	non-github-bitcoin	not found
#20	morcos	not found

Many of the old school developers (the guys who have been around for a long time) are on this forum, just under different names. Clearly you only searched for their github username, otherwise you would have found:

wumpus (aka laanwj): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2252
Pieter Wuille (aka sipa): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2786
Matt Corallo (aka BlueMatt): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=4528
cfields (aka theuni): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=167949

Note that these are either their real names, or names also used on IRC, and not github.

It should also be noted that the account "non-github-bitcoin" is applied to the commits created by Satoshi, Lasloh, and Sirius, all of whom worked on Bitcoin prior to the move to Github.


In any case, it shouldn't be that surprising that developers are not on this forum. The source code is not hosted here, the issue tracker is not hosted here, why would developer discussion be here just because it used to be?

It makes sense that discussion of actual code changes has moved to github. It's where the source code is hosted and it's where the issue tracker is. Github provides an easy way to reference code, other issues, and other developers. It allows people to comment directly on the code. It's natural that discussion of the code itself is on github because that's where the code is.

While you could argue that bitcointalk would be suitable for discussion of new innovations like how the bitcoin-dev mailing list is, if you think about it, it really isn't. Firstly, you have to make an account here in order to post, but just about everyone has an email account and can send an email to the mailing list. Then there's the difference in moderation. While bitcoin-dev similarly has few moderators, moderation is done before the email is sent to everyone, but on Bitcointalk, moderation occurs after the post is made. This means that many people end up reading spam and nonsense before the moderators clean it up. This makes for a bad experience when you want to have serious discussion. While it does take time for emails to make it to the bitcoin-dev mailing list, at least all of the subscribers do not have to read all of the crap sent to the list. And trusted email senders (people who have emailed the list before without being denied) don't have to wait. Lastly, a mailing list makes more sense for those discussions because of email threading. With everything in a single thread like how bitcointalk does it, side conversations and discussions that stem from the original can be distracting and break the flow of the thread. But with emails, those side conversations end up in a branch and aren't in the way of the original discussion.

Then there's IRC. A chat system is crucial for live discussions and a forum is simply not suitable for the kinds of things that can be discussed there. Things happen in real time and people can be notified when they are mentioned, whereas on the forum no such notifications exist, and reading new posts requires refreshing the page. It just simply is not possible to do live discussions on a forum.

[shahzadafzal]

In any case, it shouldn't be that surprising that developers are not on this forum. The source code is not hosted here, the issue tracker is not hosted here, why would developer discussion be here just because it used to be?

It makes sense that discussion of actual code changes has moved to github. It's where the source code is hosted and it's where the issue tracker is. Github provides an easy way to reference code, other issues, and other developers. It allows people to comment directly on the code. It's natural that discussion of the code itself is on github because that's where the code is.

While you could argue that bitcointalk would be suitable for discussion of new innovations like how the bitcoin-dev mailing list is, if you think about it, it really isn't. Firstly, you have to make an account here in order to post, but just about everyone has an email account and can send an email to the mailing list. Then there's the difference in moderation. While bitcoin-dev similarly has few moderators, moderation is done before the email is sent to everyone, but on Bitcointalk, moderation occurs after the post is made. This means that many people end up reading spam and nonsense before the moderators clean it up. This makes for a bad experience when you want to have serious discussion. While it does take time for emails to make it to the bitcoin-dev mailing list, at least all of the subscribers do not have to read all of the crap sent to the list. And trusted email senders (people who have emailed the list before without being denied) don't have to wait. Lastly, a mailing list makes more sense for those discussions because of email threading. With everything in a single thread like how bitcointalk does it, side conversations and discussions that stem from the original can be distracting and break the flow of the thread. But with emails, those side conversations end up in a branch and aren't in the way of the original discussion.

Then there's IRC. A chat system is crucial for live discussions and a forum is simply not suitable for the kinds of things that can be discussed there. Things happen in real time and people can be notified when they are mentioned, whereas on the forum no such notifications exist, and reading new posts requires refreshing the page. It just simply is not possible to do live discussions on a forum.

Very thoughtful post indeed and no doubt this forum is not the best place to discuss about the development of bitcoin or issuea related to bitcoin core. Since the source code is hosted elsewhere why a core developer or a technical person would be engaged here in a non bitcoin related discussions. It more convenient to stay with source control and talk about it without any un related distractions.

Also in Development & Technical Discussion section these days most of the discussion is around the usage of bitcoin. Al though some people do bring useful insights on bitcoin code but that can be answered by theoretical expert alone without the need of a bitcoin core developer.

Many of the old school developers (the guys who have been around for a long time) are on this forum, just under different names. Clearly you only searched for their github username, otherwise you would have found:

wumpus (aka laanwj): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2252
Pieter Wuille (aka sipa): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2786
Matt Corallo (aka BlueMatt): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=4528
cfields (aka theuni): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=167949

Note that these are either their real names, or names also used on IRC, and not github.

It should also be noted that the account "non-github-bitcoin" is applied to the commits created by Satoshi, Lasloh, and Sirius, all of whom worked on Bitcoin prior to the move to Github.

Yes I did try to search using their github usernames only... but thank you for the update i would love to update my list with more developers being on bitcointalk

#1	laanwj	found, Last Active: December 04, 2020
#2	MarcoFalke	not found
#3	sipa	found, Last Active: May 12, 2021
#4	practicalswift	not found
#5	jnewbery	not found
#6	TheBlueMatt	found, Last Active: May 15, 2021
#7	hebasto	not found
#8	fanquake	not found
#9	theuni	found, Last Active: January 16, 2014
#10	achow101	found, Last Active: Today at 07:25:20PM
#11	jonasschnelli	found, Last Active: October 17, 2019
#12	gavinandresen	found, Last Active: March 03, 2021
#13	luke-jr	found, Last Active: May 14, 2021
#14	ryanofsky	not found
#15	jonatack	not found
#16	dongcarl	not found
#17	promag	not found
#18	sdaftuar	not found
#19	non-github-bitcoin	not found
#20	morcos	not found