What exactly is a "blockchain developer"? Hello everyone. This isn't specifically a bitcoin thread but due to recent events I think it is important that people get an understanding of the real Elon Musk as I have no doubt he will try and reenter the cryptocurrency space again in the future as some kind of figurehead. This is of course despite the fact that he is not a blockchain developer and has made no real contributions to the space but he appears to find the need to attach himself to any kind of new technology and take credit for it. This is a familar pattern, he is neither an expert on artifical intelligence, neuroscience or infectious diseases such as Covid-19 but is able to convince people that his opinion is always worth listening to.

Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/nbq16s/the_real_elon_musk/
(Emphasis added by me.)
Every time I hear somebody mention &quot;blockchain&quot;, it always comes off as if they have no idea what they are talking about. Have I missed something? Why is there such a focus on something they refer to as &quot;blockchain&quot;, sometimes &quot;Blockchain&quot;, as if this is some sort of &quot;service&quot; that magically exists somewhere on the Internet and which Bitcoin and other &quot;cryptocurrencies&quot; build on?
Isn't &quot;blockchain&quot; just a simple word to refer to the &quot;chain of blocks&quot; that make up the technical structure of Bitcoin? If so, why does this person and many others use it in such a strange manner? A &quot;blockchain developer&quot; makes as little sense as a &quot;TCP/IP developer&quot;; it's just a technical, non-tangible &quot;infrastructure&quot; of sorts. It sounds to me like referring to a plumber as a &quot;pipe developer&quot;, even though they never touch or create any of the pipes in the ground, but merely fix clogged ones in individuals' homes.
But since I'm asking, I'm obviously doubting myself. Maybe I have actually missed something?
In bitcoin core &quot;block chain&quot; is used at lot of places and all the pull requests to change it since 2014 got NACKs so never changed
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5242
Satoshi mentioned 'timechain' : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=382374.0
The timechain is a tree shaped structure starting with the genesis block at the root, with each block potentially having multiple candidates to be the next block.  pprev and pnext link a path through the main/longest chain.  A blockindex may have multiple pprev pointing back to it, but pnext will only point forward to the longest branch, or will be null if the block is not part of the longest chain

Isn't &quot;blockchain&quot; just a simple word to refer to the &quot;chain of blocks&quot;

Yes
According to a definition mentioned in one of the slides used by Andreas in video: https://youtu.be/FYo5E7zT-vM
Blockchain is the public ledger where the network records are written.

Why is there such a focus on something they refer to as &quot;blockchain&quot;, sometimes &quot;Blockchain&quot;, as if this is some sort of &quot;service&quot; that magically exists somewhere on the Internet

Not sure when people started using the word &quot;blockchain&quot; as technology, became a buzz word and now used for lot of things related to applied cryptography and cryptocurrencies.
There are few more concepts which use 'chain' in it: sidechain, statechain, spacechain, softchain, etc.
So I am assuming few developers that are involved in something related to cryptocurrencies categorize themselves as Blockchain developers.