Programming Languages Used for Blockchain Development

As I continue to hone my skills as a developer, my interests in combining my love for coding with my hobby of trading and investing in cryptocurrencies has grown. Learning more about what languages are used for blockchain development is a great place to start if you have similar interests.

Blockchain is the foundation of the cryptocurrency revolution that has taken the world by a storm. It has become a billion dollar industry that allows users to carry out anonymous peer-to-peer transactions in a safe, secure and decentralized way.

Introduction To Blockchain

Blockchain is a collection of digital information stored on a public database. The data is referred to as the block while the database is the chain.

The blocks store key information like the date of the transaction, the time of a transaction and the amount of money transferred in that instant. A digital signature is then added before storing it in a block. This digital signature is yours, in the form of your username, ensuring that the data in the block belongs to you.

Each block is given a unique cryptographic code referred to as a Hash. This allows you and other users to differentiate blocks from each other. A successful blockchain transaction is typically involves 6 steps:

Now that you know how blockchain works, let’s talk about some of the programming languages used for blockchain development.

C++

C++ is one of the most popular programming languages on the globe and it has become a major language in the blockchain industry. In addition to its usefulness as a language in blockchain development, it also has the same principles as blockchain. Such principles include polymorphism, data hiding, abstraction and encapsulation to prevent alteration of data.

The first-ever implementation of blockchain, Bitcoin, was initially written in C++. It is a good programming language for blockchain because of its advanced multi-threading capabilities and primitive control over memory. The object-oriented features of this language give developers the opportunity to bind data and the methods intended to handle them together. This is similar to how blockchain uses cryptographic chains to bind blocks together.

Pros

• High speed
• Independent and has multiple platforms
• Statically typed

Cons

• Complex and can be difficult to debug
• Code redundancy
• Does not support garbage collection

Major Cryptocurrencies that use C++

• Bitcoin
• Ethereum
• Litecoin
• Dogecoin
• Stellar
• Ripple

Solidity

Solidity was created for blockchain development and is considered one of the fastest blockchain programming languages. It is mostly used by Ethereum developers to create smart contracts. It is similar to JavaScript and gives users the ability to create quality decentralized applications.

Blockchain developers prefer to use Solidity for the Ethereum blockchain network because it allows the developers to make use of the Ethereum digital transaction ledger by creating smart contracts between businesses.

To streamline the development process, Solidity uses preconditions, post-conditions, and invariants. This also makes the process of generating a contract much simpler for users.

Pros

• Easy to learn
• High level of popularity with Ethereum
• Statically typed

Cons

• Still a new language
• Its community is small and has less support
• Not universal and is mostly used in the Ethereum ecosystem

Major Cryptocurrencies that use Solidity

• Ethereum
• Ethereum Classic
• Tron

Java

Java is object-oriented, class-based and concurrent. It has been a favorite among developers because it can easily run on any computer that has the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed on it.

In blockchain programming, Java is useful for building interactive web pages. You can use it to create simple and immutable blockchains. With this immutability, it is impossible for anyone to change the contents or information in a block.

Blockchain developers prefer to use Java is because of its high portability. Programs that are written in Java are portable across almost all computational devices because they don’t rely on system-specific architecture. Instead, they use the universal Java Virtual Machine for execution.

Pros

• Object-oriented programming
• Easier in development than languages like C++ and C
• Big libraries and community collections
• No problem with memory allocation

Cons

• Needs the Java Virtual Machine to run
• Slower than languages like C++

Use of Java in Blockchain

• NEM (peer-to-peer cryptocurrency platform)
• IBM blockchain
• Ethereum
• NEO’s contracts
• BitcoinJ (bitcoin implementation in Java)
• Hyperledger contracts

Simplicity

Simplicity is a programming language built for blockchain. It hides several logical components from developers in order to boost their productivity, which is why it is gaining momentum in the developer community.

It’s one of the best programming languages to write smart contracts. It has the ability to change the smart contract code after activation. This is one of the advantages of using Simplicity over Solidity. Simplicity has object-oriented features and it uses principles similar to blockchain to prevent the alteration of data. It has the ability to organize programs into trees, reducing block space requirements and allowing for small transaction sizes.

Pros

• Specifically built for blockchain
• Has the ability to create efficient and safe smart contracts

Cons

• Still a newer language
• Smaller community and less support than other languages

Use of Simplicity in Blockchain

Simplicity aims to improve upon existing crypto-currency languages:

• Bitcoin Script
• Ethereum’s EVM

JavaScript

Initially, developers found it difficult to use JavaScript for blockchain development. However, with the creation Node.js, developers can now build creative and quality blockchain apps using JavaScript.

A big advantage of using JavaScript is that you don’t need to worry about integration when using it for blockchain development. This allows you to fully concentrate your efforts as a developer on the application logic.

JavasScript is also becoming more popular with blockchain development because it can handle asynchronous code. This capability is crucial to blockchain because of the possibility of millions of transactions running at the same time. JavaScripts asynchronous nature allows a program to perform multiple actions at the same time, thus improving application performance and enhancing software responsiveness.

Pros

• Asynchronous programming language
• Object-oriented
• Supports functional programming
• Prototype-based.

Cons

• Reduces performance when handling heavy computing tasks
• Asynchronous programming model makes it difficult to maintain code

Use of JavaScript in Blockchain

• Ethereum.js
• Web3.js

Both Ethereum.js and Web3.js help in connecting the frontend of an application to smart contracts and the Ethereum network.

• NEO
• Raiden Network (high-speed infrastructure built on top of Ethereum)

Python

Python is known for its simplicity. It has a large community that is active and has released libraries like NumPy, Pandas and SciPy used for different technical applications in science, math and engineering.

Python is excellent when it comes to handling numbers especially in data processing, cleaning, analysis and visualization. It is an excellent programming language for blockchain as it can be used for writing smart contracts among many other capabilities.

Pros

• Easy programming language to learn
• It’s fast and vast
• It has several libraries and frameworks
• Has a large community

Cons

• Mostly used as a server language
• Libraries are not documented as well as other languages

Use of Python in Blockchain

• Implementation of Ethereum (pyethereum)
• Smart contracts for hyperledger
• Creating contracts for NEO

As blockchain increases in popularity, the programming languages that are used to build blockchains will improve and grow with it! These are just a few of the many languages used in this space. Before creating your own blockchain pick your language wisely based on what you know and what you want the blockchain to do, test your ideas out and continue to practice. It is very likely that new languages will emerge in this space, so continue to research and most importantly have fun with it!