Comment by jmprspret
3 years ago
Thank you for actually explaining your POV. I don't understand how you expected me or the other commenters to gather this from your original comment.
If it's worth anything, you have changed my opinion on this. You raise very good points.
You're probably right about my original comment, and I apologize. These threads are full of very impassioned, very poorly-informed comments --- I'm not saying I'm well-informed about NIST PQC, because I'm not, but, I mean, just, wow --- and in circumstances like that I tend to play my cards very close to my chest; it's just a deeply ingrained message board habit of mine. I can see how it'd be annoying.
I spent almost 2 decades as a Daniel Bernstein ultra-fan --- he's a hometown hero, and also someone whose work was extremely important to me professionally in the 1990s, and, to me at least, he has always been kind and cheerful; he even tried to give us some ideas for ECC challenges for Cryptopals. I know what it's like to be in the situation of (a) deeply admiring Bernstein and (b) only really paying attention to one cryptographer in the world (Bernstein).
But talk to a bunch of other cryptographers --- and, also, learn about the work a lot of other cryptographers are doing --- and you're going to hear stories. I'm not going to say Bernstein has a bad reputation; for one thing, I'm not qualified to say that, and for another I don't think "bad" is the right word. So I'll put it this way: Bernstein has a fucked up reputation in his field. I am not at all happy to say that, but it's true.
Can you elaborate on his reputation?
Based only on random conversations and no serious interrogation of what happened, so take it for the very little this pure statement of opinion is worth, I'd say he has, chiefly, and in my own words, a reputation for being a prickly drama queen.
He has never been that to me; I've had just a few personal interactions with him, and they've been uniformly positive. My feeling is that he was generous with his time and expertise when I had questions, and pleasant and welcoming in person.
He has, in the intervening years, done several things that grossed me the fuck out, though. There are certainly people who revel in hating the guy. I'm not one of them.
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