circl

I don't know why the standard library crypto packages insist on passing around `[]byte` for things like a seed value, or why we can't just pass in a seed value to a single unambiguous constructor when generating asymmetric keys. Or how the constructor for a key pair could possibly return an error, when the algorithm is supposed to be deterministic. It all just seems a bit sloppy. Asking for a seed value like `[32]byte` could at least communicate to me that the level of security is at most 256 bits. And removing all dependencies on rand would make it obvious where the entropy must be coming from (the seed parameter). Cloudflare's CIRCL[0] library does a bit better, but shares some of the same problems. [0] https://github.com/cloudflare/circl

The article's deep dive into the math does it a disservice IMO, by making this seem like an arcane and complex issue. This is an EC Cryptography 101 level mistake. Reading the actual CIRCL library source and README on GitHub: https://github.com/cloudflare/circl makes me see it as just fundamentally unserious, though; there's a big "lol don't use this!" disclaimer and no elaboration about considerations applied to each implementation to avoid common pitfalls, mention of third or first-party audit reports, or really anything I'd expect to see from a cryptography library.