BisBabble: Endogen

In this second issue of the “BisBabble” series we welcome Endogen, a long time Bismuth supporter and developer of the Bismuth Telegram Bot, Bauer.

The interview

Q: Can you tell a little about yourself?

Sure. I’m a 38-year-old software engineer from Germany. But I’m working in the software business only since about 8 years.
Before that I was a retail salesman for a electronics retailer. Didn’t really like it and thus decided to study Software Engineering πŸ™‚ As a kid I was naturally drawn to the internet and was fascinated by software. It had this unique property that it stayed the way it was. Everything else seemed to fell apart and decay over time but not software. That stuff is staying the way it is forever. I found that interesting.

Nowadays I’m working as a SAP consultant for a company that is a SAP partner and supports customers that want to roll out SAP ME (Manufacturing Execution) to have a paperless plant. I don’t have to code anymore (unfortunately!) but I still totally like it and thus I code privately for myself.

Q: How do you describe yourself at dinner parties?

I don’t describe myself at dinner parties, I like it more to be in the background and listen to people πŸ˜‰
But if I had to describe myself, I’d say I’m totally interested in anything that is not normal and mainstream. Life is too short to be bored to death by mediocre stuff. I mean, really, I was long time interested in psychoactive drugs and their effects on consciousness and their involvement with different philosophical theories for example and I have no issues talking about that. But after I was blessed with two kids, responsibility took over and I guess I’m not as out-of-this-world as before. But I’m sure I’m still strange as hell πŸ˜€

That’s what I would actually say on a dinner party and the one or two people that would still be cool with me after that, those would be the people I would drink a beer with.

Q: What made you want/begin to code?

I think that creating something is super interesting and fun. And software is especially interesting because of it’s properties as I mentioned before.
I find it fascinating that someone can code something up, publish it on GitHub and different people all around the world can just grab that and use it for their own purpose. Proprietary software will be a niche product in the future. Everything I code privately will always be open source.

Q: Is programming your day job, a hobby?

It was a day job for a short time and nowadays is a hobby. I’m not the best programmer and there are things that I can better then programming but I totally love coding and thus do it in my free time.

Q: How did you get introduced to blockchain?

A: I first heard about Bitcoin while studying and found it cool but didn’t look into it in detail. Years later I saw that these coins actually had real value and I started looking into it in more detail. I was fascinated by the idea and by the fact that it was decentralized and couldn’t be stopped, was unregulated and totally out of the traditional financial system. It was obvious that this is the start of a new paradigm.

Q: What piece of code do you wish you’d written?

TensorFlow πŸ˜€

Q: Code you’re most proud of

This sounds silly of course but actually, the Telegram bot that I’ve written for Bismuth. It’s not like I wrote a lot of code in my life and I just like that bot πŸ™‚ I can look through the code and be satisfied with how it’s structured and how it works. And I actually got payed for something that I coded up in my free time, YAY!

Q: Programming languages you practiced?

I started coding in Java as part of my job and liked it in the beginning. Then started to write some Python code privately and totally loved it and since then never ever touched any other programming language. I’ve played around with JavaScript and Vue for some days at some point but nothing serious.

Q: What led you to Bismuth?

I love the whole crypto-industry. It’ so hilariously scammy and overblown and overvalued that I consider it funny to navigate through and on a more serious note, I think it is the future. No way this can ever be stopped. It will drag the world with it, no matter what anybody will ever try to do against that.

And since this space is so interesting and since I’m totally in love with Python, I searched for a project that was written in Python. I didn’t want to just have a client in Python, I wanted to use something that I could take apart and understand. That’s how I found Bismuth. After I saw the logo and especially after I got the relation to the chemical element, there was no way out. I like fractals and Bismuth reminds me of that.

Q: What’s your experience in the crypto field?

Shortly after I took a deeper look at Bitcoin, I found Monero (XMR). I was fascinated by it but I disliked C++ and couldn’t bring myself to code it and thus only got involved with the community and the ecosystem (created a proposal for a Monero Marketplace bot and will probably create it if it gets funded: https://tinyurl.com/y4xc98x4).

With Bismuth I was able to also get into the code and immediately liked that fact. Other then that, I like trading and for me it’s a game and hobby. I have no understanding for any patterns or strategies and I’m seriously bad at it but I’m OK with that.

Q: What would you say is Bismuth biggest strength?

That it’s coded in Python. That fact attracts a lot of competent people. Combined with the feature set of Bismuth, it’s a really interesting and fun project.

Q: What would you say is Bismuth biggest weakness?

To be honest, the code itself. The ideas are great and thought through and HCLivess (Bismuth creator) is really godlike. No way I would ever be able to come up with anything like Bismuth. That really is a lifetime achievement but that said, the code is not structured well.

Q: Any take on the current crypto industry (icos, btc, eth, exchanges, pos/pow, mining, trading, defi…)

I like to look at it from a high-level perspective (since I honestly don’t get the details most of the time) and to me the next big thing is the (totally subjective) realization that mining isn’t the way to go. What we want are nodes that directly validate and store transactions and thus directly receive the fee for doing that and store data in a database that is sharded from the beginning. If you need a second layer then your first layer isn’t the future. Gossip protocols WTF.

Q: Most loved programming language, why?

Python! Python! Python!

Q: Most hated programming language, why?

I honestly can’t judge anything else then Python and Java. I only ever coded in these two languages. Java is OK but I find it boring and after getting involved with Python, I don’t need anything else.

Q: What are you up to when you’re not coding?

Playing with my kids, thinking about stuff that is to obscure to mention, working in the garden and meeting my friends. I like to take life not to seriously to be honest and thus have no interest in most other social activities. I really like biking (downhill!!!) but have no time anymore. My kids are more important than my old hobbies.

Q: Your best piece of programming advice.

Don’t read books about programming. Code.

Thanks a lot Endogen for answering our questions, keep up the good job!