[scrollaway]

You’re wrong about it being a waste of potential imo.

It’s real world training for reverse engineers. Having worked in that field myself I can tell you I was never surrounded by so many smart, talented and exceptional people as when I worked with other reverse engineers (especially in the video game world).

RE is a necessity, and it paves the way for some incredible talent to shine and practice.

[the8472]

I think the argument is that in a better world where everything came with open specs we wouldn't need reverse engineers and those smart people could spend their time on something else. It's an argument pointing out where we live away from the global optimum.

[scrollaway]

Yes and my argument is that we might lose out on the skills being developed by fantastic reverse engineers :)

A global optimum would include some other way for these legends in the making to train.

[the8472]

They'd be solving other low level problems instead I assume. Systems that are unintentional blackboxes instead of intentional ones.