[jerf]

And there are still people running around who think that writing code based on threads and semaphores isn't superhumanly difficult and people just need to Try Harder (TM).

At least when they're wrong, they usually don't lose millions of dollars. (But only... usually.)

I think some people are mentally modeling Ethereum as a sort of hobby thing in their head when they say things like that. I mean, who cares if my hobby static-rendering blog platform has a few bugs in it, right? But Ethereum aspires to be the foundation of an economy. Real foundations of economies have billions of dollars worth of effort poured into them. While a small set of particularly brilliant people may produce something that can run in this environment, Ethereum isn't what it would look like if they did.

I also think that people don't realize that the usual fate of a cryptocurrency is to die. Bitcoin isn't the first cryptocurrency by a long shot. Cryptocurrencies in general are not strong, robust things. I think something like Ethereum is quite likely, but there's no particular reason to believe we aren't three or four more major fully independent stabs at the problem away from a stable solution. Ethereum makes Bitcoin look like a homework problem in comparison; it would almost be beyond belief that we'd get it right the first time.

[mbrock]

I think humans are capable of writing correct programs even in machine code, it's just tricky and requires some expertise.

I also think the EVM itself allows for other paradigms than Solidity that might make it easy to create certain kinds of contracts.

And I think worse is better is very powerful, so it wouldn't surprise me if Ethereum sticks along for a long time, like Bitcoin seems to be doing despite its flaws.