
Show HN: Bit v0.5.0 – Bitcoin made easy, now with SegWit support - ofek
https://github.com/ofek/bit
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aboutruby
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](https://pypi.org/project/bit).

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solidasparagus
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'.

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mkl
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.

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pavlov
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.

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drexlspivey
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](https://github.com/mcdallas/cryptotools)

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

~~~
caprese
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.

