Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Show HN: Bit v0.5.0 – Bitcoin made easy, now with SegWit support (github.com/ofek)
63 points by ofek on March 18, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



Seems more of an meta-APIs library:

- bitcoinfees.earn.com for the fees

- bitpay.com (then blockchain.info if bitpay fails) for the rates

- bitpay / smartbit.com / blockchain for balance and transactions

- And then a lot of functions mainly used to create transactions it seems (I'm not a bitcoin expert)

(utils might the common denominator of all software projects :) ) (also the repetition of methods made me think of "define_method" in ruby)

Pretty solid project! And great name IMHO, people will just google "bit github" (pretty hard to find a unique meaningful name these days), you even got the name in pypi: https://pypi.org/project/bit.


The name is cool, but not great in the age of Google. I would suggest also having a slightly longer name that is more unique - the way that the Go programming language has 'Golang'.


I'm afraid I don't have anything substantive to say, but why did you give it a name that is almost completely ungooglable? It means people trying to use the library can't easily find help.

I have the same problem with the graphics language Asymptote - finding examples and StackExchange questions is sometimes just not possible, even though they exist.


There are two common kinds of bad names in programming tools:

1) The descriptive where branding would be useful. The line of thought is something like this: "Apple gives everything such simple and obvious names. Their spreadsheet is simply 'Numbers'. I know — I'll call my new general-purpose programming language 'Code.'"

2) The branded where descriptiveness would be useful. Maybe I've built yet another HTTPS client library for language X with some kind of event-handling twist or whatever? I could call it 'pavlov-http' or 'evented-foobar-http'... But instead I'll name it 'robyzowitck' after my favorite Slobonian fantasy literature monster. Now, when person X uses my HTTP library and person Y inherits the project, they'll have to google what this library actually does, and briefly hate me for giving a silly brand name to a pedestrian utility.


If you want to dive into the bitcoin internals there is this Python library that implements a lot of the protocol stuff using only the standard library https://github.com/mcdallas/cryptotools


Easy to use offline transactions are huge. Thanks for the great work!


I agree

There are a lot of underused utilities of the bitcoin protocol that would change user experience and perception for all blockchain-based digital currencies.


Features on Bit's "soon-to-be released feature list" are PSBT and watch-only keys to make offline signing even easier!




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: