💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~sloum › geminilist › 001924.gmi captured on 2020-10-31 at 02:36:34. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Mercury

Hannu Hartikainen hannu.hartikainen+gemini at gmail.com

Fri Jun 26 07:48:52 BST 2020

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On Thu, 25 Jun 2020 at 21:48, Phil Leblanc <philanc at gmail.com> wrote:

It relates to "_explainability_": explain sockets and basic network

to a beginner and they will grasp Gemini without pain - it could even

be a basic example of how to use sockets

In my humble opinion, this extends to TLS too. Tell a beginner aboutasymmetric cryptography and how it can be used to negotiate a key forsymmetric cryptography, and they will understand the general concept of TLSand thus "grasp Gemini without pain".

I remember a Python core developer coming up with a nice motto for a

Python conference many years ago: "It fits my brain". Gemini, without

TLS fits my brain. A bicycle, even an old car may fit my brain. A

modern car does not anymore.

I have two issues with this argument. The first one is that whoever usesit, uses their brain as the golden standard. The second one is that itassumes that "basic networking" is easy to understand.

I once spent weeks and weeks in low-level TCP debugging at my day job, andobviously trying to learn whatever I can to facilitate the work. After longdays of reading RFCs and investigating Wireshark dumps, I still can't say Iunderstand TCP (let alone IP or Ethernet, let alone the complete networkstack). I once researched what it would take to implement an ethernetadapter on an FPGA and it's a huge amount of work.

I've never taken a freewheel or a derailleur apart, yet I fully understandhow they work. TCP/IP I've spent man-months on, yet I only have a surfaceunderstanding.

Sorry if this comes off as rude or argumentative. I do see the point of the"fits my brain" concept, and am actively trying to fit stuff into my brain.I do understand wanting Gemini without TLS; I just don't agree with thegoal nor with these arguments.

IMHO there would be room for a really simple, really low-latency textprotocol. Gopher over UDP, maybe? But that's another experiment.

-Hannu-------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20200626/f177951f/attachment-0001.htm>