Getting started with Ethereum (part 1)

First off, I read this fabulous post by the awesome @iam_preethi: “The Synergies Gained from Building on Ethereum’s Decentralized App Ecosystem”

Then I decided to do a simple tutorial to see how difficult it was to get started. I googled around briefly to see what was out there and the general consensus appeared to be to follow the ‘Hello World!’ tutorial on Ethereum’s own website, so I headed on over.

First things first, I installed the Ethereum Wallet for Mac OSX (click the big blue download button) and I accepted all the scary warnings around security and breaking the law and what not. Crikey. The long version of the T&C’s are worth a read too as it’s written in plain English and contains some interesting points to ponder, particularly the various risks which were already bubbling in the back of my mind.

You’ll be asked which network you want to connect to — one is the real blockchain network and requires real currency (ether), the other is a free but limited sandbox environment. I went with the latter and hoped it was the right choice for my little tutorial attempt.

First thing you’ll notice is that this application takes AGES to sync with the Ethereum blockchain. A bowl of soup and the last quarter episode of Undercover Boss later, it was still creeping along so I found this helpful comment on Github which vastly speeded things up for me.

While Mist was doing it’s syncing thing, I didn’t sit on my hands:

1. I went ahead and installed the Ethereum Cli tool(https://ethereum.org/cli) because I want to have some fun with that too. I decided to go with the Geth client via Homebrew because I’m interested primarily in web applications and it said this one was best for that purpose (I was tempted to go the Python route because I’m also learning Python, but I thought why not go this way and learn a bit of Go as well?): https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Installation-Instructions-for-Mac
2. I found the Ethereum docs site and started doing some reading to better understand what Ethereum really is, learn a bit about ether, accounts, smart contracts, Solidity, etc. (I only scratched the surface, but I’m hooked enough that I’ll probably be reading this most of the rest of today)

Top tip: You can’t use Geth via the cli if you’ve got the Mist app open and running. It’s one or the other.

So now I need to choose whether to continue with the Greeter (Hello World!) tutorial on the cli or instead build a custom token using the GUI Mist wallet app thing.

I’m going with the cli because I’ve been so hands-off on all things development for SO LONG I really want to do this the geekiest way possible.

Running the geth command to sync blocks with the cli app takes a little while, so make a cup of tea and be prepared to wait a bit. […much time passes…] I didn’t want to wait forever for geth to finish syncing so I turned back to google for help. I removed my cache and tried running the geth command again with the--fastswitch, as detailed in this comment on Github. I let that run for literally hours, then in a fit of pique I had to give up and force quit the process.

Until I’ve found a way to make geth sync without taking days, I’ll need to proceed tomorrow with the GUI version of the tutorial instead.

Not a happy day.