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Ethereum programming for web developers
- langitbiru 9y agoI remember 2015 or 2016, everyone was hyped about Deep Learning. Everyone was talking about DeepDream, Tensorflow, etc. I guess 2018 will be the year of blockchain and cryptocurrency.
- csnewb 9y agoDon't forget Big Data and Data Science. Sometime in 2017 cryptocurrency really blew up in popularity, and suddenly everyone in my LinkedIn network went from being a Data Scientist to Cryptocurrency Expert or Blockchain Developer. People love bandwagons.
- Bartweiss 9y agoAmara's Law still holds, though - technology is overestimated in the short run and underestimated in the long run. I don't think Tensorflow et al have been busts, or have even fallen short of what experts expected from them. They were just never consistent with the slavering hype they got from university press offices, tech journalists, and startup hucksters. I'm less convinced that blockchains will have a major long-run impact, but I expect solving the double-spend problem will prove useful one way or another.
- AlexCoventry 9y agoPeople are still hyped about Deep Learning, I think.
- j_s 9y agoSeeing this on the front page of HN, my first impression is "wow, people are really desperate for information on this!" Can anyone with experience point to a better starting point?
- langitbiru 9y agoI have finished Solidity tutorial on CryptoZombies.io. It was fun but it did not teach how to setup or to deploy Ethereum project on the Ethereum network. Right now, I am enrolled in https://www.udemy.com/ethereum-and-solidity-the-complete-developers-guide https://www.udemy.com/ethereum-and-solidity-the-complete-dev... It looks good but I haven't finished it yet.
- reificator 9y agoI like Stephen Grider's classes, but I also use them to measure when the hype for a given technology has reached its peak.
- mattnguyen 9y agoB9 Lab has a series of various blockchain development courses. Here's the Ethereum 101 course: https://academy.b9lab.com/courses/B9lab/X16-0/2016/about https://academy.b9lab.com/courses/B9lab/X16-0/2016/about This course feeds into a 12wk paid course with certification: https://academy.b9lab.com/courses/course-v1:B9lab+ETH-21+2018-02/about https://academy.b9lab.com/courses/course-v1:B9lab+ETH-21+201...
- j_s 9y agoThanks for the links! Can you share any additional feedback on your experience with either of these options?
- mmccaff 9y agoI've slowly started tracking tutorial articles like this, and also automated setting up an Ethereum/Solidity development environment and tooling in a VM, with Vagrant. This has been my starting point, but I haven't gone much further yet. Both the tutorial links and Vagrant setup is here - https://github.com/mmccaff/vagrant-ethereum-dev https://github.com/mmccaff/vagrant-ethereum-dev
- jklepatch 9y agoCool ! Thanks for your vagrant setup I will have a look and maybe make a video out ot it :) Btw this is my utube channel of tutorials for ethereum / blockchain development: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCZM8XQjNOyG2ElPpEUtNasA https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCZM8XQjNOyG2ElPpEUtNasA
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- asciimo 9y agoHere's a tweet (I know, right?) with a bunch of resources: https://twitter.com/JimmyRagosa/status/953667960681443335 https://twitter.com/JimmyRagosa/status/953667960681443335
- j_s 9y agoThanks! There are a lot of resources out there, many with recommendations from key figures in the community. I would love to hear more about how HN users are progressing up the learning curve -- how effective these tools are in practice.
- jashmenn 9y agoCheckout my site \newline [1]. The introduction to Solidity course is a walkthrough on how to write and deploy your first smart contract locally. It's free. [1] https://www.newline.co/ https://www.newline.co/
- jordanpg 9y agoMany of the ethereum projects are extraordinarily well documented. I would recommend skipping the blog posts and just use truffle and the ethereum official docs. http://truffleframework.com/ http://truffleframework.com/ https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/ https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/ https://web3js.readthedocs.io/en/1.0/ https://web3js.readthedocs.io/en/1.0/
- ainiriand 9y agoShameless self promotion. Today I rolled out my first tutorial to get you started on smart contract development. > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16176714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16176714
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoVery cool! Sorry for the basic question, but is it legal to do a lottery application like this with Crypto Coins because they aren't real money?
- asciimo 9y agoThat's a great question, as are many others around taxing cryptocurrency transactions. A quick googling indicates that, in the US, gambling with anything of value constitutes gambling. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5362 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5362
- ainiriand 9y agoNot basic at all! I've never thought of that to start with. But in the end this is just an example and it does not even generate random numbers.
- victorin 9y agoThe link should point to the (I guess) original source: https://happyfuncorp.com/whitepapers/webthereum https://happyfuncorp.com/whitepapers/webthereum Way more readable, links to github etc.,
- Cyberdog 9y agoThank you. I wanted a downloadable version without having to sign up to Scribd or whatever it was called. This isn't a PDF or e-book, but I can easily turn it into one.
- combray 9y agoThe repo https://github.com/HappyFunCorp/Webthereum https://github.com/HappyFunCorp/Webthereum has the original RTF if you just want to pull that down.
- rco8786 9y agoThanks! I saw the title and the source of the post and thought "I'll bet someone has a way better link in the comments" and came straight here.
- sctb 9y agoThanks! We've updated the link from https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/a-modest-proposal-for-ethereum-programming/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/a-modest-proposal-for-ethe....
- tabeth 9y agoCan someone describe a few applications of blockchains in real world applications that cannot be implemented without a blockchain? I'm really struggling to come up with even a single case. I thought some sort of secure voting mechanism would be a good candidate, but that too could be done with an immutable database. EDIT: Besides crytocurrencies, I mean.
- mpfundstein 9y agoBitcoin?
- Bartweiss 9y ago> an immutable database I guess the question would be: if you don't trust a central authority to keep that database immutable and add records honestly, how do you design a distributed solution? Blockchains are pretty much just an append-only log, but they were the first decentralized answer to the double-spend problem. So I'm not sure it's a case of what blockchains can do that immutable databases can't - they're a way of implementing decentralized immutable databases.
- kang 9y ago> Blockchains are pretty much just an append-only log By this definition, ethereum is not a blockchain[0] > they were the first decentralized answer to the double-spend problem Physical reality is decentralised answer to double-spend problem (the gold molecules 'exist' in your hand, no centralised god manifested it but physics worked on universal matter in a decentralised manner). The 'problem' is created when we assumed centralised trust is even possible. A blockchain is decentralised answer to double-spending a 'non-physically interactable' good(don't mean 'virtual' because POW is real). [0]https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/9535/how-does-a-hard-fork-rollback-transactions https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/9535/how-does-a...
- Zhyl 9y agoBlockchain is to crypto what AOL was to the early web. We've had hashing, dencentralisation, public key cryptography etc for years, but all of it was kind of academic, kind of out of reach. Similarly AOL brought email, the web, IM together into a nice package that people could get behind and use even though there wasn't obvious inherent value to those who were using the internet beforehand. AOL brought the news homepage, Ethereum has brought crypto-cats. AOL gave 8-year-old me an interest in dial-up connection sounds, bitcoin gave me an interest in staring at financial graphs.
- increment_i 9y agoI've been dabbling recently, and as I've said before I'm quite put off by the limitations of Ethereum. As it stands now, it's main use case appears to be the development of new cryptocoins, perhaps voting applications..? And yet, every now and then you come across a nugget of true insight when working with the Ethereum protocol, for instance the gas payments to nodes to run code effectively should stop DDoS attacks since it would require vast sums of money to disrupt the network. It remains to be seen how valid this idea is in practice, but you could look at ideas like that and say, "Yeah, that seems like a step forward." Anyways, if Ethereum really will become Web 3.0, then comparatively speaking I'd say we're not even in the 56k modem era yet.
- taternuts 9y agoYeah I agree it's an incredibly clunky and slow user experience that seems to have limited application. Gambling I think is another decent use.
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- hnmullany 9y agoOnce there is a proper infrastructure for trusted Oracles, there will be lots of interesting applications: small group crowd funding, payment distribution from trusts,execution of wills.
- kang 9y agooracle is just a blockchain buzzword for api
- sremani 9y agoIs it? I was thinking it was more like .. "trusted external entity" Here is a [old] post from the horses mouth https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/ethereum-and-oracles/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/ethereum-and-oracles/
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- MrBingley 9y ago> Solidity reads a bit like Javascript. It has a lot of quirks and pitfalls, though, especially when it comes to moving money around. But isn't that, like, the whole point of the language? It was literally written for moving money around. Cripes. > Be very careful if writing real money-transfer code; do your security homework, get others to review your code, and seriously consider an official security audit or even formal verification. Amen.
- naveen99 9y agoWhat's an official security audit ? You mean pay a 3rd party to do it / sell off the liability.
- derefr 9y agoEthereum's "quirks and pitfalls" are a result of people coming into it thinking that their mental execution model of most normal programming languages will suffice, when the execution model of the Ethereum VM is quite different (precisely because it is "written for moving money around", but also because its computations are only run by the will of random miners, who like to get paid.) Once you understand the Ethereum abstract machine (i.e. the thing described in the http://yellowpaper.io http://yellowpaper.io), the "quirks and pitfalls" of the programming languages built on it (Solidity, LLL, Serpent, Mutan) become more like obvious design constraints.
- Karrot_Kream 9y agoAgreed. I'm not a JS fan by far, but I don't see anything wrong with Solidity (nor am I a huge fan). The Solidity pitfalls are just the pitfalls offered by the EVM. I agree that tooling should improve to highlight potential failures, but to treat Solidity like JS is a mistake.
- Rotor 9y agoThanks for sharing, also the Solidity Smart Contract are not bad for getting started: https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/introduction-to-smart-contracts.html https://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/develop/introduction-to-s... Also for anyone starting Ethereum or Blockchain development, I'd recommend learning and understanding The DAO Attack of 2016: https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists/ https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists/
- kang 9y agoIf you are a web developer and looking into making useful products(not just to raise money) you should first look into public-key infrastructure applications. Once you have made your first PKI application you might find ethereum redundant and irrelevant even.
- patrickmay 9y agoThere's also an LLL (Low-level Lisp-like Language) introduction here: https://media.consensys.net/an-introduction-to-lll-for-ethereum-smart-contract-development-e26e38ea6c23 https://media.consensys.net/an-introduction-to-lll-for-ether... with links to examples.
- fallat 9y agoYep, I think LLL is much better than Solidity: http://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2017/12/comparing-solidity-to-lll-and-why-i-use.html http://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2017/12/comparing-solidity-to-l...