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> my company is planning to have a division start using Ethereum as a development platform Hi! Serious question: can you explain more about what you mean here?

> my company is planning to have a division start using Ethereum as a development platform Hi! Serious question: can you explain more about what you mean here? I'm having trouble imagining what "development platform" means here, or how/why a division would use Ethereum as one. I'm guessing you mean something other than software development?

cableshaft 9y ago
No, I mean software development. Ethereum has the concept of smart contracts, which are programmable to a certain extent (I haven't dived too deep into it myself, but then again, I'm not a part of that division). They wrote up a blog post about some practical use cases for it: https://www.blogs.conduent.com/2017/12/05/the-possibilities-of-blockchain-use-cases-for-b2b-b2c-and-government-services/ https://www.blogs.conduent.com/2017/12/05/the-possibilities-...
lojack 9y ago
Not the person that originally posted this, but the goals of Ethereum isn't to be a currency, its to be a decentralized computing platform. It implements a turing complete virtual machine that uses the blockchain as verification of the output of the software. Smart contracts are actual pieces of software executed by all of the nodes in the system, and they can communicate with each other. Running your software consumes Ethereum which is used to pay the nodes that verify the output.
- EliRivers 9y ago
  Perhaps you can help me with my ignorance too; what advantage does it have over existing computing systems, be they centralised or decentralised, or is there a particular class of problem that they're particularly superior for?
  - stuxnet79 9y ago
    The Ethereum platform shines for use-cases in which centralized trust is basically impractical or an impossibility. To me the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) exemplifies the novel aspects of this kind of computation. Sadly, the whole dApp ecosystem is flooded with initiatives that in practice would run better, and more efficiently outside the EVM. By this I mean the costs of running the contract on the blockchain do not really scale up to the benefits of running it in a decentralized, trustless context. So your instinct, that it is not advantageous to run applications on the EVM is in fact correct in most of the use-cases I've seen so far (cough cryptokitties)

cableshaft 9y ago

No, I mean software development. Ethereum has the concept of smart contracts, which are programmable to a certain extent (I haven't dived too deep into it myself, but then again, I'm not a part of that division). They wrote up a blog post about some practical use cases for it: https://www.blogs.conduent.com/2017/12/05/the-possibilities-of-blockchain-use-cases-for-b2b-b2c-and-government-services/ https://www.blogs.conduent.com/2017/12/05/the-possibilities-...

lojack 9y ago

Not the person that originally posted this, but the goals of Ethereum isn't to be a currency, its to be a decentralized computing platform. It implements a turing complete virtual machine that uses the blockchain as verification of the output of the software. Smart contracts are actual pieces of software executed by all of the nodes in the system, and they can communicate with each other. Running your software consumes Ethereum which is used to pay the nodes that verify the output.

EliRivers 9y ago
Perhaps you can help me with my ignorance too; what advantage does it have over existing computing systems, be they centralised or decentralised, or is there a particular class of problem that they're particularly superior for?
- stuxnet79 9y ago
  The Ethereum platform shines for use-cases in which centralized trust is basically impractical or an impossibility. To me the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) exemplifies the novel aspects of this kind of computation. Sadly, the whole dApp ecosystem is flooded with initiatives that in practice would run better, and more efficiently outside the EVM. By this I mean the costs of running the contract on the blockchain do not really scale up to the benefits of running it in a decentralized, trustless context. So your instinct, that it is not advantageous to run applications on the EVM is in fact correct in most of the use-cases I've seen so far (cough cryptokitties)