From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 04:52:01 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net
Subject: Re: cypherpunks coding challenge
In-Reply-To: <v03102801afd30380db10@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <199706221823.TAA00771@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> At 2:38 AM -0700 6/22/97, Adam Back wrote:
> >So... how about a code writing challenge, an award for the best
> >cypherpunk project every month.  (No monetary prize, just vote on list
> >to decide most significant project).
> >
> >Perhaps a list of how many lines of code.  A hall of fame if you like:
> >
> >% wc -l `find . -name \*.h -print -o -name \*.c -print`
> >
> >Eric Young		SSL-eay		101,721 lines
> >PGP Inc			pgp30		    (?) lines
> >Phil Zimmermann & co	pgp263		 34,891 lines
> ....
> 
> Not to be tedious about this, but why would "lines of code" be an
> interesting metric?
>
> I'm reminded of a cartoon showing a Russian factory winning the "greatest
> tonnage of screws produced," with a crane lifting a massive, 100 meter long
> screw above the factory. The dangers of the wrong metric.
> 
> I think we need a few major innovations more than some number of
> lines of code.

Well, personally I'm not that bothered about line counts (good code
tends to be smaller than sprawling badly written redundant stuff,
anyhow).  But what I am bothered about is that not that much in the
way of cypherpunks apps are getting written, and that PGP Inc, aren't
going to write them for us, because they won't sell to fortune 100
mega-corps.

> (No, I'm not a programmer. But I've done a few "hacks" which were
> interesting and useful, I think. Taking readily available stuff, "BlackNet"
> made the concrete point that data havens and anonymous markets already are
> possible. Number of lines of code written: zero. The task is to combine
> some of the existing tools into new things. Raw lines of code is not
> necessarily useful.)

Indeed.  I was going to include a line count of your cyphernomicon,
but I appear to have mislaid my gzipped copy.

The part about a cypherpunks award for most significant project of the
month was the meat of the post.  I speculate that a web page with
tabulated wish lists (from list discussion), where these are ticked
off as done, etc might be some encouragement.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`