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What is the purpose of Solidity? Why did there need to be a new language for interacting with the Ethereum Virtual Machine? This really couldn't be accomplished

What is the purpose of Solidity? Why did there need to be a new language for interacting with the Ethereum Virtual Machine? This really couldn't be accomplished by a python SDK?

kamyarg 5y ago
Not an expert in solidity but from my limited experience EVM and smart contracts have really different approach when it comes to computation. two things that come to my mind: - There is really no random() function due to need for determinism - Space vs. Time complexity is distorted, the gas you pay for instruction vs. byte is really different economics compared to AWS EC2 instance/hour etc.
- yaitsyaboi 5y ago
  Interesting, do you suggest any sources to read more about this?
  - kamyarg 5y ago
    Not sure about articles but I can recommend Crypto Kittens Tutorial[1]. It has been some time since I did it(Late 2018 I think), but was really informative to get the mindset and different constraints people deal with in smart contract world. [1] https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitten-class/breeding/introduction https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitten-class/breeding/introduct...
splintercell 5y ago
Solidity is a DSL. DSLs have their purposes and this happened to be a correct purpose. It just also happens to be that Solidity is a terribly designed language.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  In what way is Solidity terribly designed?
  - f00zz 5y ago
    Not an expert, but integer overflows getting silently truncated sounds pretty terrible. I understand there are safe arithmetic libraries, but overflow exceptions should have been built right into the VM
    - meowface 5y ago
      I agree. Thankfully, this was fixed in Solidity version 0.8 (released December 2020). Arithmetic operations now automatically revert on overflow/underflow, unless the programer explicitly wraps them in an "unchecked" block (sort of like how Rust supports "unsafe" blocks).
  - Paradigma11 5y ago
    It's modelled after JS with the explicitly expressed intent to get web devs from JS to Solidity. And it worked.
    - spiralx 5y ago
      Except that it has all of the ergonomics of mid-2000s PHP and MySQL. Hah, this comment from a discussion here in 2017 also explicitly compares it to PHP of that era :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212
gokhan 5y ago
What's the benefit? These are all human errors, easily reproducible in any language.
- masklinn 5y ago
  So none? Because I’d expect a langage custom built for smart contract to prevent or at least mitigate issues like mixing unrelated objects or never updating variables.
RhodoGSA 5y ago
tldr; there is. Also, Gavin wood the writer of the Solidity programming language left etheruem and founded polkadot, writting substrate and ink in the process. Solidity is just a programming language to call functions and code on the blockchain. You can theoretically write it in any language but need to compile down to EVM at some point. Solidity wasn't writting from the ground up to be safe and secure. There are a number of projects like vyper, which is a pythonesque language that compiles to the EVM. It's more centered around safety.

What is the purpose of Solidity? Why did there need to be a new language for interacting with the Ethereum Virtual Machine? This really couldn't be accomplished by a python SDK?

kamyarg 5y ago

Not an expert in solidity but from my limited experience EVM and smart contracts have really different approach when it comes to computation. two things that come to my mind: - There is really no random() function due to need for determinism - Space vs. Time complexity is distorted, the gas you pay for instruction vs. byte is really different economics compared to AWS EC2 instance/hour etc.

yaitsyaboi 5y ago
Interesting, do you suggest any sources to read more about this?
- kamyarg 5y ago
  Not sure about articles but I can recommend Crypto Kittens Tutorial[1]. It has been some time since I did it(Late 2018 I think), but was really informative to get the mindset and different constraints people deal with in smart contract world. [1] https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitten-class/breeding/introduction https://www.cryptokitties.co/kitten-class/breeding/introduct...

splintercell 5y ago

Solidity is a DSL. DSLs have their purposes and this happened to be a correct purpose. It just also happens to be that Solidity is a terribly designed language.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
In what way is Solidity terribly designed?
- f00zz 5y ago
  Not an expert, but integer overflows getting silently truncated sounds pretty terrible. I understand there are safe arithmetic libraries, but overflow exceptions should have been built right into the VM
  - meowface 5y ago
    I agree. Thankfully, this was fixed in Solidity version 0.8 (released December 2020). Arithmetic operations now automatically revert on overflow/underflow, unless the programer explicitly wraps them in an "unchecked" block (sort of like how Rust supports "unsafe" blocks).
- Paradigma11 5y ago
  It's modelled after JS with the explicitly expressed intent to get web devs from JS to Solidity. And it worked.
  - spiralx 5y ago
    Except that it has all of the ergonomics of mid-2000s PHP and MySQL. Hah, this comment from a discussion here in 2017 also explicitly compares it to PHP of that era :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14691212

gokhan 5y ago

What's the benefit? These are all human errors, easily reproducible in any language.

masklinn 5y ago
So none? Because I’d expect a langage custom built for smart contract to prevent or at least mitigate issues like mixing unrelated objects or never updating variables.

RhodoGSA 5y ago

tldr; there is. Also, Gavin wood the writer of the Solidity programming language left etheruem and founded polkadot, writting substrate and ink in the process. Solidity is just a programming language to call functions and code on the blockchain. You can theoretically write it in any language but need to compile down to EVM at some point. Solidity wasn't writting from the ground up to be safe and secure. There are a number of projects like vyper, which is a pythonesque language that compiles to the EVM. It's more centered around safety.