Tauchain is not easy to understand but here are some concepts to know to track Ohad's progress
Someone asked over social media why anyone would want to hold onto AGRS tokens merely due to faith in Ohad Asor. This is a good question to ask and a good time to ask it. I'll explain first why I'm holding and then explain how it is important to understand what you invest in.
I hold AGRS because I've communicated with Ohad Asor and he is one of the rare people who is better at research and development than I am. In fact, he is the best I've met so far in the crypto community at that specifically. R&D is the most critical component in software design and we see over and over again if they get that wrong projects are doomed. One of the strengths of Steemit, EOS, etc, is that Dan Larimer is very good at conducting both R&D and at writing the code.
Tauchain currently and unfortunately requires a Phd level understanding of computer science to get very excited about. This is not so good for people who do not really understand their investments but it means that you have the option to ask people who do have Phd level knowledge to either explain Tauchain to you or some aspect of these concepts which I'll list below.
The concepts to understand in order to see what Ohad is attempting on Github
- Compiler-compilers.
- Partial fixed point logic (necessary to understand TML).
- Tuples and N3 (necessary to understand TML).
- Abstract syntax tree.
- Context sensitive grammar (necessary to understand the Earler parser).
- Partial evaluation.
These concepts may be abstract but they all work together to allow for you the user to input both a document and a grammar into TML and receive a useful output. You have the power of partial evaluation with Futamura Projection. Without going into too much detail here, what it will allow is for the user to provide the input document defining the language and a source code. The first document is the "interpreter" to parse the source code.
So if we look at Github we can see Ohad has completed a rough yet functional implementation of the TML with partial fixed point logic and partial evaluation. The Earley parser takes the source code which is always a string, and parses it. This quote from Wikipedia explains it better:
In computer science, the Earley parser is an algorithm for parsing strings that belong to a given context-free language, though (depending on the variant) it may suffer problems with certain nullable grammars.[1] The algorithm, named after its inventor, Jay Earley, is a chart parser that uses dynamic programming; it is mainly used for parsing in computational linguistics. It was first introduced in his dissertation[2] in 1968 (and later appeared in abbreviated, more legible form in a journal[3]).
In developing compilers we use the grammar to define the syntax of a programming language. TML will require a grammar defining the syntax of the language you want to use and also the source code which are the commands. The AST is an abstract representation of the source code and the logic is applied are part of the syntax analysis phase of compiling. If I did not explain this sufficiently, I apologize as this is again something complicated and requires a lot of prerequisite knowledge.
The point being that if you really want to understand why some of us are so excited about what Ohad Asor is attempting to do then the only way to truly grasp what is at stake is to do the necessary learning. Learn as much as you can about your investment. Study the concepts you have to study in order to keep up with what happens on Github. You don't have to trust the experts if you're willing to gather the knowledge to become an expert yourself. This means reading at minimum all the Wikipedia entries and at maximum it could mean spending hundreds of hours watching Youtube videos, reading academic journals, like some of us have been doing.
If you do not want to invest the time and energy to truly understand Tauchain then maybe it is better that you do not buy a token you cannot understand. Simply wait for it to reach a stage to where you can see what it can do for yourself before making a decision. Do not consider this post or these comments as investment advice but merely a suggestion to use caution with regard to how you spend your money if you do not understand what you are getting into.
References
- http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~mckeeman/cs48/mxcom/doc/Grammar.html
- https://gist.github.com/tomykaira/3159910
- https://github.com/IDNI/tau
None of this post should be considered to be investment advice. This was posted for educational purposes.
Ohad, when did you begin your career in software development?
If you want to communicate with Ohad you may do so by going to this website: https://www.irccloud.com/invite?channel=%23%23idni&hostname=irc.freenode.net&port=6667
, log in and ask for Ohad.
He usually goes by Naturalog.
Very nice post and great article.. Thanks for share it..
Men this thing, the concepts... in fact I choose to follow Tau with faith. I've read @trafalgar's analysis of the past, read @kevinwong's and now yours, still doesn't mean I can explain it to a kid but one thing is undeniable: it's a great project. That's the feeling I end up with each time I read any update. I may not get the intricascies but the overall gospel? Hell ya
This just great and golden. Thanks!
The skepticisms usually arose from fears and worries about too many tokens popping up by the day.
The strategic tip is not to invest in what you do not understand.
I will check out "tauchain"
Feel free to communicate directly with Ohad and participate in the research if you really want to learn at the deepest level how Tauchain is being built and what it is: https://www.irccloud.com/invite?channel=%23%23idni&hostname=irc.freenode.net&port=6667
The delisting from bittrex is making now a great opportunity to stack up on agrs. Especially for those who think that Ohad will succeed in developing tau chain.
Bueno la verdad es que te felicito @dana-edwards porque yo trate de entenderte, y no pude, por supuesto, es muy profundo para mi este tema
I guess after reading this I wonder what the problems are the tech is supposed to overcome and what the objectives of the coin are. I feel that most non-btc coins don't really offer new functionality behind hype.
I feel btc offers anonymity and resilience, and some mystique. Most other coins ie LTC, eth, doge, dash all seem to be just trying to be a different form of currency that will be worth a dollar. bts and steem seem like they offer the ability to make true value transactions based on content. But all of these coins seems like they will never truly be scarce and their owners, outside of bts who has a community thing going on for devel, are heavily premined meaning the people who got their first are going to be continually dumping.
Will tau be anon? Will it be scarce? Is it intended to be a currency or investment that goes 'to the moon?' All the tech in the world don't mean much if it's just another kindof public dollar or fashion statement.
So what are the objectives of the project? Where can i buy besides open.agrs on bts? (of which currently there are none to buy....)
Tau is not a coin. TML is a new language. Like how HTML was a language which allowed for the birth of the WWW. TML is a Meta Language which will allow for an advance on a similar scope as the birth of the WWW. Bitcoin isn't a programming language and is an app. Bitcoin is a great app, but as an app it can be implemented in any language including TML. So now you see the distinction?
Ethereum has a smart contract language called Solidity. Tezos has a smart contract language as well but designed to be more secure. EOS and Cardano will also provide progammability. None of these languages are as powerful or has as much flexibility as TML. So the first goal of Ohad is to produce the best possible language from which to write apps in and then Agoras will be the first app after Tauchain itself.
Tauchain is not Tau. Tauchain is to be written in TML. There are competitors and the main competitors are Cardano and EOS. EOS in specific utilizes Web Assembly but this in my opinion has a lot of unknown risks in and of itself. The problem with EOS and Cardano is that expertise is centralized around core developers. You have to be an expert to do certain things. The advantage TML will have is you will not have to be an expert.
Remember, Tauchain is not a Coin, it's not even a cryptocurrency. Tauchain is more important than cryptocurrency. TML is to be the language Tauchain will be written in.
This is informative, thanks.
This is why the talk of compilers.
Will TML, tauchain, agoras, offer both anonymity and the ability to be a verified individual? Will it offer access to the darkweb? Will it offer the ability to organize into groups similar to B. Brown's Pursuance Project?
Ultimately I am most concerned about the current extreme difficulty in verifying anything and the current ease with which powerful, wealthy interests subvert every citizen effort, preventing any individual from having any power whatsoever other than their function in a system that is more machine than human.
Like, I thought when I woke up this morning, how hard would it be for spooks to create some mythical coder as a story to wrap up their next DARPA release.
I am quite frankly having a difficulty believing anything on the internet at the moment, is assange assange? Is segwit good or bad? Has a single actual human read my blog?
We are truly in age of crisis as pertains to the individual human's attempt to understand the world.
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because we are all experienced to a certin extent, experts in our own field. And our field is always not that easy to explain or grasp. Thanks for that diligent formulated blogpost!! Very appealing