> You just have to know what a carry propagation bug is
This is one of the things that drives me nuts about the crypto community. The natural response upon reading, "You just have to know X" if you don't already know is to go search for X. Well, if you go search for "carry propagation bug" you will find lots of examples of carry propagation bugs being found and fixed, but no explanation of what one is. The thing that "you just have to know" is not so easy to find. The courteous thing to do when mentioning something that "you just have to know" but which is not easy to find is to provide a pointer or a short in-line explanation. When you don't do that you leave your reader with no choice but to publicly expose their ignorance of this purportedly crucial knowledge by asking, which I will now proceed to do as a public service: What the hell is a carry propagation bug? Where do you look for them? And what is their impact?
This is one of the things that drives me nuts about the crypto community. The natural response upon reading, "You just have to know X" if you don't already know is to go search for X. Well, if you go search for "carry propagation bug" you will find lots of examples of carry propagation bugs being found and fixed, but no explanation of what one is. The thing that "you just have to know" is not so easy to find. The courteous thing to do when mentioning something that "you just have to know" but which is not easy to find is to provide a pointer or a short in-line explanation. When you don't do that you leave your reader with no choice but to publicly expose their ignorance of this purportedly crucial knowledge by asking, which I will now proceed to do as a public service: What the hell is a carry propagation bug? Where do you look for them? And what is their impact?
And while we're at it, what are "table stakes"?