In recent years, blockchain technology and other web3 concepts have gained traction. With the popularity of cryptocurrencies and dApps, the demand for blockchain developers is also increasing day by day. In this article, we will discuss some of the blockchain coding languages you should learn to enter into this field. For general-purpose coding languages, we will also discuss the specific libraries that you can use to develop blockchain applications.
Solidity
Solidity is an object-oriented programming language built for implementing smart contracts in blockchain applications. It is mainly used for blockchain development on the Ethereum blockchain platform.
Solidity is influenced by various programming languages like JavaScript, C++, and Python. It supports static typing, inheritance, external libraries, and user-defined data structures like other high-level programming languages.
Why Solidity Is Used as a Blockchain Coding Language?
The solidity programming language has been developed solely for blockchain development. Due to this, it supports all the features that are required to implement a reliable blockchain application.
Solidity provides a flexible coding pattern for smart contracts that also ensures stability. With its easy-to-use features, Solidity helps the developers write smart contracts with the least pain.
With Solidity’s Application Binary Interface, you can use the different type-safe functions in your program. Also, solidity provides a reliable and secure medium for developing smart contracts between two parties.
Python
Python is one of the most used coding languages nowadays. It is an open-source, general-purpose programming language that you can use in almost any domain. From web development to data science, and from machine learning to android development, you can learn python and use it in any domain of your choice. It has already been used in implementing projects like pyethereum and creating smart contracts for HyperLedger and NEO.
If you want to use Python as a blockchain coding language, you can use the web3 library. The web3 library can be used to interact with the Ethereum platform. If you don’t want to use any third-party libraries, you can use in-built libraries for implementing the entire algorithms, proof of work, etc for implementing a blockchain application.
Why Should You Use Python for Blockchain Development?
If you are a programmer experienced in the python language, you can choose to implement blockchain using Python. Even if you are a beginner, you can choose to start blockchain development after learning the basics of Python. It is one of the easiest programming languages to master. Due to the presence of libraries, frameworks, and a large community to share your knowledge and clear your doubts, Python can be a good choice to start with if you want to create a blockchain application.
Java
Just like Python, Java is also one of the most popular programming languages. It is one pf the most used programming languages for software development. You can also use Java as a blockchain programming language. It has also been used in developing many blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, IOTA, HyperLedger, and Fabric.
C++
C++ is a statically typed language with high execution efficiency. It has been used in developing various blockchain platforms such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ripple, Stellar, and EOS. With the functionality to execute in parallel and non-parallel threads and the option to move semantics for copying data effectively along with other features, C++ is one of the most used blockchain coding languages. If you are a software developer, there is a high chance that you know C++. Hence, getting into blockchain development using C++ might not be very hard for you.
C#
C# is majorly considered for building dApps, Smart Contracts, and infrastructure in a Blockchain environment. It has features of many programming languages such as Java, C, and C++. Being open-source, C# is gaining popularity day by day and is one of the most popular programming languages nowadays. Hence, you can give C# a try if you want to create blockchain applications.
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Vyper
Vyper is a contract-oriented programming language inspired by Python. It runs on Ethereum virtual machine. The Vyper programming language has been developed to help us build secure smart contracts with great ease. It focuses on language and compiler simplicity. Due to this, it follows the Python language to provide features for writing human-readable code.
Why Should You Use Vyper for Developing Blockchain Apps?
Vyper has been designed as a contract-oriented language just to facilitate blockchain programming. It provides features for bounds and overflows checking, Support for signed integers and decimal fixed-point numbers, strong typing, the facility to compute a precise upper bound for the gas consumption of any Vyper function call, and Small and understandable compiler code that makes it a suitable choice for blockchain development.
Vyper doesn’t provide features for class inheritance, inline assembly, function overloading, operator overloading, recursive functions, and infinite loops. Thus, you might find it hard to implement your logic if you need the above features for implementing blockchain applications.
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Simplicity
Simplicity is a low-level programming language aimed to provide greater flexibility and expressiveness than the bitcoin script. It allows you to verify the safety, security and costs of a blockchain script. It also offers native merklized scripting, formal semantics, and type checking. To use Simplicity on Bitcoin will require a soft fork and such a proposal has not yet been made. Currently, there is Simplicity support for test branches of the ElementsProject.org and Bitcoin Core code bases. Simplicity is still under development. Once completed, Simplicity can become a better alternative to the bitcoin script.
Simplicity consists of nine primitive operators called combinators. The semantics for combinators are formally specified. However, implementing Bitcoin functionality at such a low level result in large, slow, and expensive programs.
Pre-written Simplicity programs that implement basic functions can be added to Bitcoin consensus so that other Simplicity programs can inline those functions using a short identifier, eliminating their size penalty. The functionality of the in-lined Simplicity code can then be re-implemented in more efficient languages, such as C, which can be proved to be equivalent to the pure Simplicity programs. These substitutions that are named jets allow an entire program to be specified in the Simplicity language, including operations like hash functions and signature verification and are yet to be executed using code from other languages to achieve performance similar to today’s Bitcoin Script.
Rholang
Rholang is an open-source blockchain coding language designed to achieve scalability, high speed, reliability, and formal process orchestration. It is built using the latest advancements in concurrent languages and provides complete asynchronous execution using its concurrency features which are a core feature of the programming language.
Rholang is built on reflective high-order calculus, which helps it become fully concurrent. It is built on Rchain infrastructure. Rchain uses directed acyclic graphs that help it provide high scalability. As a consensus algorithm, Rholang uses proof of stake which is very efficient compared to other consensus mechanisms.
Looking at its features, Rholang seems to be a promising blockchain coding language that you can learn to get into web3.
Erlang
Erlang is a functional programming language used to build highly scalable soft real-time systems with requirements of high availability. Erlang’s runtime system has built-in support for concurrency, distribution, and fault tolerance. This makes it one of the candidates for coding languages that can be used to implement blockchains.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed different blockchain coding languages you can learn in 2023. Apart from these languages, you can also use Ruby, Rust, JavaScript, PHP, Go, and other programming languages for blockchain development. It all depends on the language you are comfortable with and the functionalities you need in your blockchain application.
To learn more about other domains in programming, you can read this article on data analyst vs data scientist. You might also like this article on advance coding concepts.
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers.
