Random vs. Cryptographically random are typically separate

Posted Sep 23, 2015 1:35 UTC (Wed) by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
In reply to: Random vs. Cryptographically random are typically separate by njs
Parent article: Python and crypto-strength random numbers by default

Computer "numbers" are these weird things that are almost-like-numbers with fairly non-subtle failure modes in many contexts.* A lot of learning computer programming is learning all these details where things don't work the way one would naively expect them to. If they don't understand that random.random uses a deterministic RNG, then they probably have a lot of other problems in programming.

* E.g. exists a, b, i, j such that (a > 0.0) && (b + a == b) or (i > 0) && (j > 0) && (i + j < 0).

Random vs. Cryptographically random are typically separate

Posted Sep 23, 2015 15:26 UTC (Wed) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]

> If they don't understand that random.random uses a deterministic RNG, then they probably have a lot of other problems in programming.

CSPRNGs are also deterministic. Determinism is not what burns cryptographically-inexperienced programmers.