So there's a controversial feature added in C2y, named loops, that has spawned many a vociferous argument. Now, I'm a passionate supporter of this feature, for various reasons, that I can (and have, in the committee) brought up. And I know some people who are against this feature, for various reasons that have been brought up. And at the end of the day, it kind of is a popularity contest because weighing an argument of "based on my experience, this is going to be confusing for users" versus "based on my experience, this is not going to be confusing for users" is just a popularity contest among the voters on the committee, admittedly weighted by how much you trust the various people.

And then there's a third category of person (really, just one person I think, though). This is responsible for the vast majority of the email traffic on the topic. They're always ready with a detailed point-by-point reply of any replies to their posts. And their argument is... um... they don't like the feature. And they so don't like the feature that they're hanging on to any scintilla of a process argument to make their displeasure derail the entire feature, without really being able to convince anybody else of their dislike (or being able to be convinced to change their mind to any argument).

Now I don't have the cryptographic chops to evaluate DJB's arguments myself. But I also haven't seen any support for his arguments from people I'd trust to be able to evaluate them. And the way he's responding at this point reminds me very much of that third category of people, which is adversely affecting his credibility at this point.

The really big difference between named loops and cryptography is that if one gets approved and is bad, a couple new programmers get confused, while with the other, a significant chunk of the internet becomes vulnerable to hacking.