Months ago, Bismuth user “Whatever” developed a shiny app to monitor his BIS mining rigs, wallets and Hypernodes.
Apps you code for yourself, because you feel an urging need for it can end up most useful, and this one makes no exception.
Preview of the Bismuth toolbox main screen
As a followup, Whatever also added more useful intel with hypernodes related data and monitoring
This app was already showcased in previous progress report:
Interview with whatever
Very nice work and needed app, so we had to get in touch more closely and ask him a few questions 🙂
Q: Can you tell a little about yourself?
A: I’m an elder guy (>25 y.o.) with a young soul (~25 y.o.) with 9to5 job and a handful of hobbies, including programming and cryptocurrencies.
My job is outside of IT sphere and I’m not a professional coder (just an enthusiast), although I do use programming at work (matlab mostly) for modelling data and automating certain processes.
Q: Nothing wrong with not being an IT pro, you are the living proof 😉 When and how did you meet your first computer/code
A: It was not until I went to college when I got my first PC; Intel Celeron 100Mhz it was as I remember.
I started learning about programming with Pascal and Basic (if you are young enough not to know these languages – consider yourself very lucky), unfortunately my career path didn’t require any coding skills and coding always remained just as a hobby for me.
Q: Lucky me 🙂 Then, how did you get introduced to blockchain?
It was yearly 2017 (just a few months before the global crypto hype; ETH was around $10 that time)
I asked myself: “WTF is this bitcoin everyone is talking about?”.
Started reading about blockchains, BTC, ETH, mining. It all was so NEW for me and looked pretty COMPLICATED… hah… magic two words.
I need no other reason to dive in.
I had some cash to burn, so I built my first GPU mining rig and started mining ETH, then other coins until I came across BIS in late 2018.
Before BIS all crypto projects were just “yet another shitcoin that I can mine” for me.
Everything changed with BIS; I actually tried to understand the project and what these guys were trying to accomplish.
I stick around since then and it’s only because I have met some nice people at the right time here (EggdraSyl, Evilpokerqueen, Raetch, and other team members) who were very friendly, polite and helpful with all the questions I (and others) had.
Q: It’s reciprocal, for sure. The whole team appreciates a lot that you begin there and Bismuth would not be what it is without it’s long time “fans”.
Is there some piece of code you wish you’d written?
A: I wish I’d written Microsoft Windows, or at least I’d wish those guys who do it to stop doing it (they don’t know what they are doing).
Q: Haha!!! Some code you’re proud of?
A: It doesn’t exist. I’m not proud of any of my code (I’m not a professional coder and had never been formally trained to code);
If anything I’m ashamed of most of it. However I’m proud of solutions to complex scientific problems I achieve with the help of my ugly code.
Q: What would you say is Bismuth biggest strength?
Talented Dev team and engaging and supporting community.
Q: What would you say is Bismuth biggest weakness?
Lack of marketing, which seems to be a result of lack of resources (people with appropriate expertise in the team and community).
I appreciate that dev team may not have expertise in marketing, but, guys, it’s not enough to just deliver some good product, you have to sell it.
And there are some good things about BIS that should be sold now.
The code is never perfect and never complete and at some point you have to say: “it’s good enough, it’s time to sell it”.
The time has come to get to the board and sketch a marketing campaign. It’s not gonna sell itself.
Q: Thanks for the honest feedback, we appreciate that!
We’re slowly evolving, I hope you’ll see soon. Back to code: Your most loved programming language, and why?
A: It’s hard to choose one. I guess it depends on the task.
If I were allowed to choose 2 (not 1), I’d say it’s Python (for more casual coding) and Matlab (for scientific coding).
I have only written a handful of lines in Python but it looks so great that I must name it as one of my favorites :).
Q: Most hated programming language, why?
A: It’s Java. I do a lot of dev (for android) now in Java and I hate it to the bones.
It’s just the amount of boilerplate code required for simple tasks which are accomplished easily in other languages; and of course hated by everyone null exceptions.
I’m switching to Kotlin as soon as I finish my current project (Bismuth Toolbox).
Q: “Keep your friends close, and your enemy closer” could then be your dev moto 😀
A: I’m not the one to give any advice about programming; I’m the one to be given such an advise 🙂
Well, Bismuth toolbox works fine and meets a demand, that’s all we needed!
Thanks a lot for your support of Bismuth and contribution to its ecosystem, that’s much appreciated!
Reward Time
The Bismuth team is in the process of redefining the available bounties and priorities. However, we are always ready to reward personal initiatives from the community when they clearly benefit Bismuth as a whole.
The Bismuth Toolbox is also released as open source, with source code available at https://github.com/DoNutsLise/BismuthToolbox
As a result, we will award Whatever a 10,000 $BIS reward for his work and dedication.