Programming contracts and blockchain: Where do I start?

Question

So I'm doing my academic practices in my university and I'm assigned to a company that has plans of doing blockchain projects. Neither of them has actually been defined so far, and I'll work alone.

I don't have previous experience in the blockchain field and the only formation I've been given is a bunch of video courses. The theory behind the technology is okay (pretty interesting, tbh), but for the application, most of them are outdated and I find it impossible to follow the course. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

I've spent the previous days trying to follow tutorials, but there's always something that differs from what it is expected to happen and what actually happens when I follow the instructions. Version errors, this tool doesn't work, this one is discontinued... My tutor doesn't know much about the technology and I've simply been told to "learn" about Solidity and blockchains. I still haven't managed to find a way to apply and test what I have coded in Remix, and there's no way I can know what I'm going to be asked to do yet, since, as I mentioned, the project I'll work on hasn't been defined yet.

Is there any reliable tutorial which is up to date and won't mess with more versions, deprecated stuff and compatibility issues that I can stick with? I'm really lost and desperate at this point. I've tried pretty much everything (and ended up installing a lot of stuff in my computer - geth, parity, truffle, ganache...), but it seems that the easy, understandable documentation and guides are from a little bit ago, while things have changed to this date.

I'll truly appreciate any kind of help. Have a nice day.

Answer 1

It depends on what env you want to use. I've done my first steps following this: https://alanbuxton.wordpress.com/2017/07/19/first-steps-with-ethereum-private-networks-and-smart-contracts-on-ubuntu-16-04/ https://medium.com/coinmonks/ethereum-blockchain-hello-world-smart-contract-with-java-9b6ae2961ad1

And below Euthereum tools summary was usefull for me as well https://github.com/ConsenSys/ethereum-developer-tools-list

Answer 2

Here is a list of shortcuts which I keep at hand as part of and during development:

• Ethereum
• Solidity
• Truffle
• Ganache
• Node
• Web3
• BigNumber
• Mocha

Answer 3

If you can forgive the self-promotion and if it's not a violation of the editorial policy here, I can recommend B9lab: https://academy.b9lab.com/courses/course-v1:B9lab+ETH-SUB+2018-07/about

It's an intense deep dive with instructor mentoring, small projects and challenges, human code review and feedback as you go and a very realistic capstone project that will demonstrate you have mastered it and you're ready to work on real-world projects.

Remote delivery at your own pace, with support.

Disclosure: I am one of the instructors.

Hope it helps.

Answer 4

You don't have to install all these ganache, truffle and any other tool. As you described your problem with versions and decrecated stuffs here I'll suggest better and easy way to work with solidity and blockchain. Actually before couple of months I've same condition as yours. So follow these steps to move ahead with solidity and blockchain.

• Study every fundamental, terminology, use cases about blockchain.
• Study basics of Python(just coding structure and rules)
• Study basics of Solidity and why it is more often used for blockchain development.
• Learn basics of contract, which kind of entities any contract have and what is decentralized access and dApps.
• What is coin, token and difference between them.

Use Remix IDE for development of Smart Contracts. According to me Realtime Usecases will help you more to understand it all better.

Hope it'll help you!!! Let me know if any other query about it.