Feedback from outside the "SAFE space"

Marketing
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I’ve been trying to understand what this is about, but it’s a confusing maze of forum threads and very general “ideas” of things without anything concrete to actually start chewing on.

I tried downloading that SAFE Browser, but when you finally get it installed and set up, it doesn’t let you do anything without registering a forum account and spending a lot of time here loading a bunch of pages. The project seems to be in a perpetual alpha state.

I cannot fathom how there are people who’ve been following this project for what seems like many years, and still it’s nowhere near done.

As a developer eager to make something popular, I can’t help but look at the whole SAFE network project as a bunch of dreamers who tell each other about how great it will be the day this goes live, but will that day ever arrive?

I eventually had to stop telling myself that I was just “being thorough” and face the fact that I had been accomplishing nothing for so many years, while thinking in my own head that I was working hard for all that time. I’m not saying that this must be true for the SAFE project, but from the outside, it certainly resembles some kind of vaporware scam at this point.

Let’s say I manage to figure out how to make something for SAFE. Will that just sit there and rot on my hard drive while the world passes by, or will SAFE speed things up at least tenfold from now on and get things actually ready and done? Should I just buy a bunch of Apple hardware and make an “app” for their store and forget about SAFE? Is it meaningful that I spend my time and energy into this project? I want to believe, but all I see is vague promises of some foggy future when SAFE is going to revolutionize everything.

To me, it seems extremely unlikely that SAFE will be: 1. Allowed to exist at all if it’s really the way it has been described. 2. Be able to find enough users (who have to download and install and understand special software, which may be blocked/censored) for it to be meaningful for developers to make anything for it.

Can’t you at least let us test things freely without being an established forum account on this forum? It’s almost as if you don’t want people to enter your closed circle, frankly.

Already now we have zero control of our hardware and software. Will there be enough time for SAFE to even have a technical chance of ever becoming even reasonably successful before computers no longer exist as we know them?

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If you are a dev then give https://hub.safedev.org/ a shot. There is also a dev forum linked at the top of the page. I am not sure how much you know of the project, but reading a little will help for sure :wink: Your chosen name does seem in line with your critique though so maybe that is intentional.

In any case, there is a lot to see and do in the project, to help or build apps or just test actually. So welcome if you are up for working with people and moving the project forward, I am sure you would enjoy it, but perhaps you need to approach folks as an equal because you are. The forum is friendly and with lots of deep thinkers and supporters, you will perhaps find it difficult if you approach with hostility, I hope you don’t.

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Well, if it’s really the way it has been described, it won’t have to be allowed to exist. It will simply exist.

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A forum account is required because there is not yet a safecoins and if there is free access for everyone there will be spam… We tried this in Alpha 1…

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No surprises here. Most people wouldn’t post this detail. The project is making great progress but for anyone not following it for a couple of years it’s IMPOSSIBLE to know.

Hopefully that changes.

Come back in 12 / 24 months, Maidsafe will be rockin.

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hm? if you’re a dev then i assume you understand that SAFE connections can be embedded in every app you want - even without the user knowing you are using safe technology :thinking:

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You don’t need a forum account if you use mock routing or a local network (see Network Types).

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Interesting first post. As a newcomer why not just ask instead of assuming things and throwing around accusations? Honestly you’d save yourself a lot of bother and everyone else a feeling of mild irritation.

Anyway, if you are genuinely interested in understanding a bit more I would modestly suggest starting here as I wrote and maintain this post for people who want to understand the basics.

If you are genuinely interested in developing you could watch this recent coverage from the DevCon.

And if you still want to criticise go for it, but educate yourself first otherwise it’s just trolling.

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Maidsafe network in 90 seconds explains it.

Sir Tim is interested in SAFE, so much for vaporware.

It or something like it will exist because it is necessary.

Saying a better alternative to clear net will be censored as a reason to give up is pathetic.

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Many here wonder why Maidsafe is not following the trend in coin appreciation or included in many popular industry related news. I think your point is valid and I feel it’s unfair for anyone to criticize you for taking a stand. There is no clear path to understanding Safenet and it’s a shame that some members of the @maidsafe team treat you like a bag of S*** for taking the time to post your thoughts but on that.

The Maidsafe developers and many of the community have worked tirelessly at the project.

But there is a disconnect. There is a complete failure by the team to make a clear path to understanding the Safenet and it is often apparent that anyone asking is crucified.

This may be the reason some very important community members have abandoned this project.

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If answering questions equals mistreatment, then he surely got mistreated.

Like who?

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Also well worth reading the SAFE network primer document which lays out a lot about the network very clearly:

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Please tell, who on the maid safe staff (team) have done this? I know (extremely) occasionally a short answer maybe be given, but treating someone like shit is very rare if ever. Now as to members of the forum, well that is different.

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Taking a stand like:

… is worth criticising. Every single technology that has not yet been completed, developed or invented will require a lot of work to finish. Some will take many years and decades, but that doesn’t make them a waste of time.

However, the point of it being tricky to get a grip on the network is valid & others have said the same.

The primer doc does a great job if it’s easy to find, and the new dev hub (hub.safedev.org) will make getting into developing much easier.

So valid questions are good, but coming in with so much edge & saying people should give up on the project is going to get peoples backs up.

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To me it’s just trolling so I tend to ignore it. If somebody who didn’t know me came up to me in the street and started criticising me they would get a reaction, but I wouldn’t hang about. I’d probably just let them know it wasn’t welcome and say goodbye

There are always people like this, and others waiting on the sidelines for a chance to show their own irritation will often jump in.

From my observation the people who have left are those with strong opinions who have liked something here and wanted to be a part of this, but also didn’t like something - wanted things to be different - and in the end could not handle the dissonance. They keep bringing the issue up again and again over time, and eventually they either lose it and get banned, or they complain one last time and go.

This doesn’t mean that the team or the community are wrong when the issue has been aired many times and often discussed at great length beforehand. IMO it’s just that some people want things to be different, and decide to leave because they feel very strongly and can’t handle that they have not been able to change other people’s minds.

I’m not saying that maidsafe and the community never get things wrong, of course we do. I’m saying that the fact some people come here, contribute a lot, and then leave doesn’t make them right, or the rest of us wrong. We are what we are, and some people don’t like that for one reason or another. One of the things we are is open, tolerant and willing to discuss a lot more than any forum I’ve ever been party of. And we have boundaries. In many forums the OP would have been deleted and hardly anyone would have seen it.

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Too right and as you know @happybeing we believe in letting people have their say as long as its not offensive, illegal or attacking others personally. Thus no action on the OP

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Here’s a perfect example: Safe Network - DevHub

I’ve tried to read that multiple times, but I cannot for the life of me understand what it’s trying to show me or how it makes any sense. I have no idea how to start actually developing for SAFE (not talking about static files but actual interactivity) after that “tutorial”. Call me “stupid” if you will, but I’ve coded some pretty advanced stuff in my days and used all kinds of really confusing APIs, but this is just… ? And maybe something is wrong on my end, but that “primer” link just goes to some minimal webpage with a bunch of general one-liners about what SAFE is?

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okay - i’m pretty much a 0 web developer (and to be honest didn’t read the page but just looked at the code) but maybe you just think of it as being super complicated …? (or i’m misunderstanding the problem you seem to have …?)

the example doesn’t show you how to do general programming - if you want to create a shiny app you can find tutorials all over the web i would assume - but if you want to store/retrieve data on/from the network with your webapp you do it like this:

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you tell the app its name, author, vendor , … , authorize it and create a handle/link to the network from your webapp
→ now you can start storing stuff on the network

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by creating a data handle and storing the data you want in mutable-data-object :slight_smile:

… a little bit further down there is an examples on how to read the data

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…or how to update MD-files …

it might help to start out by playing a bit with the safe api playground by @hunterlester which should enable you to understand how different things work and how to use the tools

but if you have suggestions for improvements I’m very positive feedback is very welcome and posting suggestions (e.g. in the dev forum ) would help the next developers to easier find their way into the network :slight_smile:
What is it you would like to see in addition to storing on safe/retrieving from safe …?

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I’m surprised how easy that code looks. A Unity script in C# to calculate 3d object orientaion useing Quaternions seems more complicated. Cheers

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There could definitely be tutorials describing design patterns for SAFE, ways you can structure you data in a SAFE application etc.

If this was the regular web, that tutorial would basically be something like “how to connect and get started with mysql”. That’s nice and described how to connect to the SQL database and do some simple queries, but it doesn’t describe how to structure your data, what kind of tables to create for your application and so on. Depending on what kind of apps a person may have written in the past, the basics could be enough if the person already knows how to structure the application and has written other apps in similar ways. Someone who has never written a web app before might instead be completely lost after just reading a basic tutorial on getting started with mysql.

With SAFE you have to write apps in a way that’s quite different from what most people are used to, so I can definitely see how many would be confused after just reading some basics on how to write and read data from the network. One of the big things that I’ve noticed newcomers are often confused about is that they often don’t realize that they’re not supposed to write server-side code. The app should just be a client side app where SAFE is used as a kind of database with some interesting properties that makes it possible to do many things on the client side that otherwise would require server-side code.

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