Quote from: LTU_btc on February 13, 2025, 05:09:15 PM

Lot of things can be said now after we saw what happened. If theymos would have knowed how things will end, I'm sure that would have done something different. Unfortunately, it ended as mistake, very expensive mistake.
Personally, I reacted to these news calmly as there weren't my money involved. If I would be one of donators, probably I would be disappointed or angry.

Quote from: LoyceV on February 13, 2025, 08:50:43 AM

This is the first comment I see about the age of the developers (but much of this happened before I joined Bitcointalk). I don't think 25 years of age is bad for programmers: they probably had years of experience and are good coders. However, it sounds like they lacked oversight by an experienced senior (software engineer). Being a good programmer isn't enough, and seeing the bigger picture takes much more experience.

Not much is known about these developpers, so I'm wondering did their age was mentioned somewhere? And I don't really know how 25 yers is bad age. If it's implication that they were too young, then I don't agree. It's normal age for web developper and and many people already have enough experience at such age.

There were several red flags about hiring these specific developers but age is also an important one. When you do business with millions of $, you go with the safe options. The conventional knowledge about software development is that to become a senior developer you need around 10 years of hands on experience. University doesn't count as business experience. At 25 you're fresh off university and you may have one or two years of business experience at best. You're nowhere near a senior developer.

And even when it comes to someone being a senior developer, not everyone is suitable to lead a team regardless of experience in years. Let alone to supervise a software development project where you'll not only be responsible for planning and supervision, but even be responsible for managing your own goals and schedule within the project.

It was obvious from early on that these particular developers lacked the seniority and experience in their field to handle something like this. Age is one of the factors that make it blatantly obvious.

There are exceptions of course. For instance, Linus Tolvards, the Benevolent Dictator for Life of Linux, started work on the project when he was 21. Similar story for Vitalik Buterin. Hell, even Theymos is a profoundly talented individual because going by his word where he said he's 21 around 12 years ago. Which means he coded the first ever block explorer when he was a teenager.

So to an extent, maybe we can excuse Theymos for entrusting people around his age. But as I wrote above, when doing business with millions, the safe solution would be to hire an experienced firm, instead of expecting three young adults to show profound levels of intellect and complete a vast project on their own.

The questions remain however. After all these years we finally have an answer about the total costs. But that brings up more questions. We can understand now, the critics were right. But still the questions remain. Why were these specific devs picked and how could it make sense to keep paying so much money for this rate of progress?