Suck My Code

As much as I love reading Chardin, Hobbes, Hegel, Locke, etc., there is only one philosophy that is ultimately relevant - mathematics. The rest is balderdash and chicanery. My hobby brought me to number theory, and, eventually, what has become more than a hobby - has become an obsession, really, and that's cryptography. A like-minded friend sent me a link to a beautiful little article documenting the history of cryptography, and I had to share it here. I have read David Kahn's seminal history, Codebreakers, and it's equally long but relentlessly exciting fictional counterpart, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, numerous times. And both offer rigorous and extended exposition on the technical aspects of crypto. But this article, The Code War, is a short and succinct history of this most fascinating science. I knew it was worth sharing when halfway through the article I found myself thirsting for a quick overview of the ramifications of quantum computing on cryptography and it is promptly detailed at the end of the article. Check it out.