Overstock CEO Calls Bitcoin Code "Slop"

[froggyfeels]

Patrick Byrne is not referring to downloading the blockchain or the size of it.
He is referring to the actual source code being sloppy and not easily scalable.
Let's keep in mind that Satoshi was a genius, great programmer and bitcoin was an experiment.
When coding something so complicated the V1 of the code has a lot of room for improvements.
Thus the reason many btc developers have concerns about the scalability of btc.

[rext]

Satoshi = 21st century Einstein

[Sukrim]

Let's keep in mind that Satoshi was a genius, great programmer

Nope...

Genius maybe, good programmer probably too but definitely not "great".
Also he secured his premine by developing on Windows only.

[rext]

lol, well he did made you and I comment on a forum based on his idea.

[allthingsluxury]

Kind of an odd choice of words, but I believe he is referring to the block chain.

[Dr. Pepper]

Yeah I agree, kinda harsh to call it 'slop'.

[BitCoinDream]

carrying the blockchain on a mobile phone is not what most people would consider as portable, just chewing up to much space. Is there anyway for 'average Joe' to carry a shortened block chain or transactions of the chain without the need to have a degree in computer science?

Why the average Joe will contain the whole blockchain on his phone ? We have online wallets for mobile use. Its like having a few notes in your wallet for daily use. Some more can be kept at your computer's hosted wallet. That is like having some more notes in your almirah for weekly/monthly use. The rest should be kept at cold paper wallet. That is your bank balance.

[Dr. Pepper]

carrying the blockchain on a mobile phone is not what most people would consider as portable, just chewing up to much space. Is there anyway for 'average Joe' to carry a shortened block chain or transactions of the chain without the need to have a degree in computer science?

Why the average Joe will contain the whole blockchain on his phone ? We have online wallets for mobile use. Its like having a few notes in your wallet for daily use. Some more can be kept at your computer's hosted wallet. That is like having some more notes in your almirah for weekly/monthly use. The rest should be kept at cold paper wallet. That is your bank balance.

There are a few wallets that don't need to download the blockchain, and like BitCoinDream just said phone apps work fine. I'm sure there will be more of these options in the future too.

[311]

Does the CEO even know any code? I don't know why he would say this about it as it's very negative to say he's such a fan.

[Cryptopher]

The title is a little misleading, but I suppose all headlines are designed to provoke interest.

I'm not sure if he is a coder himself, or whether he is simply paraphrasing others. My interpretation of what he is saying here is that Bitcoin needn't rest on its laurels of being the first mover, and that it's never too late to introduce an alt with real value.

It took some balls to start taking bitcoin payments on the scale that Overstocks did - some call it a purely media stunt, others call it being ahead of the curve (with respect to other larger retailers).

[QuestionAuthority]

This guy really hates the government and Wall Street. I wonder if someday one of those CIA guys wearing all black will be waiting in his bedroom closet for him to come home?

[LiteCoinGuy]

Ripple.

slop.

[IIOII]

He's probably right with part of the code.

I think it's important to have a 100% compatible alternative implementation of the Bitcoin protocol that is build from scratch.

I also see the danger that more and more additional features are implemented into Bitcoin Core, while the real "Core" is not cleaned up / optimized.

Ripple.

Nice laugh.

[Finchy]

I don't think describing it in such a negative fashion was such a good move. I don't think bitcoin or the code is slop at all.

[RawDog]

Some people I know download 20 gigs of porn in a night,

You ought to consider running with a little higher class of folks.  WTF?

[QuestionAuthority]

I don't think describing it in such a negative fashion was such a good move. I don't think bitcoin or the code is slop at all.

You need to look into it more closely. Isn't it unusual to call something a transaction ID when it can be changed? At the very least it's misleading to call something a transaction ID when it doesn't identify a transaction, right? Do you think it's a good idea to have millions of dollars running around a system that a single pool attacker can destroy and devs have known about the problem for years? Don't you think it's a little weird that no one has implemented pruning yet even though Satoshi himself talked about the eventual need? Why are businesses required to make transactions fast by accepting 0-confirm transactions? Can't that problem be fixed? There have been so many cover your ass responses from Bitcoin devs in the last couple of years that I really don't trust anything they say. Byrne is right, Bitcoins code is sloppy and needs improvement.

[calmindifference]

It does the job well enough and the single codebase supports a variety of build targets, but certainly doesn't adhere to SOLID principles. Some things I would like to see are - one class per file policy, zero tolerance of functional code in header files, breaking up of 4000 line main.cpp

[DeathAndTaxes]

Well the "slop" of waiting a day to download a blockchain is too much for most people, especially new users to Bitcoin.

Most casual users will not download the blockchain.  They will run a SPV client and will need to download blockheaders which are no more than 5MB per year of blockchain history.  Still I doubt this is what he means by slop.  The blockchain, isn't code it is data.  So unless he used a tortured definition of "codebase" I would assume he is referring to the actual code that makes up the bitcoin-core client not the blockchain.

[Lauda]

Then why doesn't he help in coding it, if the code is 'Slop'. People would rather complain than do something about it.

[Bitcoin Magazine]

alright Satoshi u have to come out of the wood work now.