Follow-up feedback for a better "dev" experience to start building on top of NYM.

[gyrusdentatus]

This is mostly for:__ @mfahampshire @futurechimp
And Jaya(fwd to her please if possible?)

Maybe also @jessgess @sven-hash @mmsinclair but you do not really have to read it ... sorry for tagging you - if it bothers you, then skip it.

How I wish the team would interact with developers, hackers and tech community in general.

This is in no way any criticism. But I think some of my points are valid and would greatly improve a lot of things.

Disclaimer:

While this comment may not be directly related to the current release v1.1.9 - I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts on the longer-term suggestions, I think it is complementary to my earlier feedback interview.

I just had a few quick ideas that I wanted to explore and share, so here are a few topics that I think are worth exploring:

This is 6-12 months, the first suggestion could be even 2-5 years.

• let anyone decide themselves how they want to run their system. Using NYM with something that is more high-level full-suite would be super cool. Think cargo instead of rustc when you build stuff.
• chaining run and init into one command. This was always a problem and will cause even more problems when we move for example to k8s. --- why would this be an issue to implement or what is your reasoning behind it? I hate to init something for testing on each new machine I get. I want to be able to spam stuff I need as quickly as I can.
• more in-depth docs on your changes with Sphinx and others, coco, various new nym-side stuff. I can't do it, because I know only that much. You guys know more than anyone in the world reg these topics.
  • explain somewhere how the Sphinx is even created for example.
• in general - every a bit more complex topic should be well documented, because obviously the nymsphinx is not the same thing as what is in the original paper.
• would be lovely to have some educational resources - just pointing to a good source of information, read that IETF, docs for that crate, book… **Making a list of further reading on each essential topic is in my opinion crucial if we want to truly make this work.

Here is an example of what I was reading a few minutes ago. This is enough. Just say “Hey H., go read this and then come back and try to ask again” and I do not need to hear anything more :) …**

# This is a must read for anyone who wants to truly develop a secure, bleeding-edge apps on top of NYM

Read this:

BCP 230
RFC 8900
IP Fragmentation Considered Fragile, SEPTEMBER 2020
<some-url> for IETF .txt

• dedicated chats for contributors - with limited access. INTERNAL. Other people like @cgi_bin , myself or dozens of other people I can think of could vet these people in some “stupid” DAO way …? You will need this anyway for vuln disclosures with dedicated email that goes directly into your whatever matrix chat: Let's say I am someone unknown, found a really breaking exploit, how do I reach you?
  • this means I would like to see 2 company-invite-only channels for bug reports that are too sensitive, with your custom template. && dedicated developer channel, invite only to chat about the technical stuff above. I am well aware I kept asking you and Andrew stupid questions all the time, but I think I can now turn it into somewhat coherent message that explains very well what I mean.
  • let the devs ask research questions - more in touch with the r&d. Yes, I know how A and D are really busy and all, but we need this. A lot of good devs left the project because of this. Can explain more in depth somewhere else.
• Show your faces NYM! Make a vlog or smth, I dunno. I certainly do not mean “promo” material for normies, but for the people that build stuff.

This is after-all, not only about money, if it was, I would be doing some gigs that pay really well, but I would not be working/trying to work on something that could save lives(oopsie a little cliche here) just make the totally broken thing we call internet a better world.

AMAs are an over-used format and people are not really that engaged anyway. - You can even pre-record stuff for AMA that would run over a month perhaps (The questions). - Then answer the best questions in a video-format with high video and mainly audio quality. - I don't get why people are so obsessed with some live talks …(I would love to have the audio of @futurechimp explaining a gardenhose to tor. Even my mum would understand how tor works better than most of the population haha!!!)…… Imagine Master Dave doing live cam scribbles or using animated objects. He is one of the best educators, I have ever seen. There are only few people that can explain these complex topics so even my mum or my 6 yo niece would understand it.

Cheers, H

PS

Written from stupid iOS app (not sure where the preview is so excuse me for any formatting mistakes. This was not enhanced by chatgpt. It just told me my suggestions are sh*t. So I added a disclaimer at SECTION 2)

Originally posted by @gyrusdentatus in https://github.com/nymtech/nym/issues/2912#issuecomment-1445276529

Lol yeah that is what happens when you use iOS Github app. Thinking that I was commenting on a release...how stupid I was, eh?