Just because you say so doesn't make it true.
It's obvious to professionals that gmaxwell doesn't know what he's doing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6ls7av/gmaxwell_and_core_fanbois_got_ripped_a_new_one[] karljt 19 points 10 hours ago
Wow! That was a bitch-slap of epic proportions.
[] chernobyl169 32 points 9 hours ago
The dispute about ++i v i++ was very illuminating. Troll buster is right on this point: ++i saves an instruction. He's also right about loop caching which is even more important; it underlines that bitcoin-core has terrible memory management that is extraordinarily time-wasteful, especially in the most-used libraries. The strongest point he brought of all was using uncompressed LevelDB - there's literally no good reason to bloat the node's storage like that. These are serious concerns that have been floating around for years and strongly contributed to the fragmentation of the development teams.
[] NilacTheGrim 50 points 9 hours ago*
Read the Troll Buster criticism. He's spot on. Can confirm. Am a C++ programmer with 18 years' in the biz. Everything he says is technically accurate.
Even small things suck in core. Try compiling it for Windows. You'll quickly find that despite their blathering on about being cross-platform -- you end up having to compile it using MinGW (either cross-compile it on Linux or 'natively' [again, using MinGW] on Windows) due to lack of build system support for Windows.
So even GMaxwell's weak defense about why they never bothered with architecture-specific optimizations falls apart. He cries "but but cross platform" and the reality is even at cross-platform they do a shit job.
And also, seriously. Optimize yo' SHA256 lib, fuckers. It's the single most critical code path in all of bitcoin. And.. it's shitty. As Troll Buster said -- there are fast platform-specific libs available (freely) that are many times faster.
Also GMaxwell clearly just finds arguments and defenses for why he's right and is a lazy motherfucker. Troll Buster is right -- compression is very standard stuff and deserves to at least be an option in bitcoin and be explored. All people like GMaxwell do is come up with excuses for not doing ANYTHING.
GMaxwell is ignorant and incompetent, basically.
This Troll Buster dude really knows what he's talking about. 100% spot-on.
[] NilacTheGrim 23 points 11 hours ago
Yeah and what does idiot GMaxwell do? Hand-wavy explanations for why not to do it.
He's lazy and incompetent.
[] chernobyl169 19 points 11 hours ago
Well, I wouldn't call them hand-wavey. He at least tries to make his arguments sound technical, but they are in fact hollow or disingenuous. It's saddening to know that coders with his attitude are involved in production-level projects all over the world.