BlockChain
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Blockchain Coding
Blockchain Coding: The Many different Languages You Need! The blockchain technology is incredibly fascinating. It won’t be far-fetched to think of a future which will be built entirely on it. So, what do you need to learn in order to start developing on the blockchain? Which languages will give you the edge? In this guide, we will go through some of the more major ones.
Problems with developing blockchain software
Before we begin, let’s checkout some of the challenges that a blockchain developer faces. Creating and maintaining a public blockchain is not easy because of a number of reasons.
Reason #1: Security
Blockchains, as David Schwartz puts it, should be fortresses. Firstly, the code is public and open for all to see. Anyone can look over the code and check for bugs and vulnerabilities. However, unlike other open code resources, the downside of finding vulnerabilities on blockchain code is massive. Any programmer can hack in and get away with potentially millions and millions of dollars. Because of these legitimate security concerns, development on blockchain is usually very slow.
Reason #2: Resource Management
It is important to keep pace with the network. You cannot fall too far behind and not keep up with all the network demands. You should be well equipped to handle remote and local queries.
Reason #3: Performance
The blockchain must always perform at its highest possible capabilities, but for that to happen the language chosen must be extremely versatile. The thing is that there are certain tasks in the blockchain which are parallelizable whilst there are some tasks which can’t be done in parallel.
A good example of “parallelizable” task is digital signature verification. All that you need for signature verification is the key, transaction and the signature. With just three data you can conduct verifications in a parallelized manner.
However, not all the functions on a blockchain should be done that way. Think of transaction execution itself. Multiple transactions can’t be executed in parallel; it needs to be done one at a time to avoid errors like double spends. Some languages are good at parallel operations while some are good in non-parallel operations
Reason #4: Isolation
What is deterministic behavior?
- If A + B = C, then no matter what the circumstances, A+B will always be equal to C. That is called deterministic behavior.
- Hash functions are deterministic, meaning A’s hash will always be H(A).
So, in blockchain development, all transaction operations must be deterministic. You cannot have a transaction that behaves one way and then behaves another way the next day. Similarly, you cannot have smart contracts that work in two different ways in two different machines.
The only solution to this is isolation. Basically you isolate your smart contracts and transactions from non-deterministic elements.
Blockchain Development Languages
we have discussed the main problems that blockchain developers face. Now let’s finally check out some of the languages that the developers can use to code on the blockchain.
