David Wong

cryptologie.net

cryptography, security, and random thoughts

Hey! I'm David, cofounder of zkSecurity, research advisor at Archetype, and author of the Real-World Cryptography book. I was previously a cryptography architect of Mina at O(1) Labs, the security lead for Libra/Diem at Facebook, and a security engineer at the Cryptography Services of NCC Group. Welcome to my blog about cryptography, security, and other related topics.

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What is the best tool?

blog

Constantly, when I start a new project, I try to look for better tools to do the job.

Lately I’ve been using CodeIgniter as a PHP MVC, jQuery as a javascript library, Bootstrap as a blueprint and TWIG as a template engine.

I’ve been noticing numerous people from the CodeIgniter community moving to Laravel, which seems to be pretty awesome. So I look at Laravel, and I think to myself “gosh this looks fun to learn, but I don’t have time and I have a lot of projects in mind”. And then as I read more and more about Laravel, I see people talking about how RoR is better. And then about how Django is better… This seems like a never ending search for a better technology.

I read somewhere that good coders code, great coders re-use. And more importantly, amazing coders ship. I have to ship code, I have to be productive, and I don’t think I should be wasting too much time learning new technologies.

The difficult thing is to judge whether or not the time wasted in learning a new technology would be less than the time wasted coding with an outdated one.

So I want to learn, and I want to ship. And it’s hard to do both.

suggested reads:
Ruby on Rails blog
Just learn Vim blog
Where have I been? blog
← back to all posts blog • 2013-12-21
currently reading:
What is the best tool?
12-21 blog
📖 my book
Real-World Cryptography is available from Manning Publications.
A practical guide to applied cryptography for developers and security professionals.
🎙️ my podcast
Two And A Half Coins on Spotify.
Discussing cryptocurrencies, databases, banking, and distributed systems.
📺 my youtube
Cryptography videos on YouTube.
Video explanations of cryptographic concepts and security topics.