One of the greatest technology trends of the decade that emerged as a smart solution in different use cases like smart contracts, cryptocurrency, or supply chain is Blockchain. No doubt, Blockchain is promising solutions in many use cases both in the enterprise or public blockchain space. Different developer communities lead this revolution, and different programming languages for Blockchain development are used for that purpose.
This blog will have an overview of 10 such most used programming languages for Blockchain development.
Related post – Are Blockchain and AI a perfect match?
Programming languages for Blockchain development
1. Solidity
Solidity is one of the fastest-growing programming languages for Blockchain development, which is also an object-oriented high-level language. Primarily it is designed for creating smart contracts and run on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Python, C++, JavaScript inspire the language and also leverages Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM.
Solidity is designed for Blockchain; hence, it can solve many problems faced by the Blockchain developers. The language has similarities with the ECMAScript syntax but has features like static typing, variadic return types, etc.
Benefits:
- Developer-friendly
- It can access to JavaScript infrastructures, debuggers, and other tools,
- Statically typed programming
- Precise accuracy, etc.
- Can have inheritance properties in smart contracts
2. Vyper
Vyper is a contract-oriented programming language for Blockchain that is derived from Python 3. Hence, you can use the same syntax for the Vyper and Python 3. However, Vyper does not have all of Python’s features. Furthermore, Vyper is created as an alternative to Solidity and is usually used for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), similar to Solidity.
However, the control structures for Vyper and Solidity are different, as well as their security issues. Similarly, their OOPs functionalities are also different.
Principles and Goals [Ref]
- Security: It should be possible and natural to build secure smart-contracts in Vyper.
- Language and compiler simplicity: The language and the compiler implementation should strive to be simple.
- Auditability: Vyper code should be maximally human-readable. Furthermore, it should be maximally difficult to write misleading code. Simplicity for the reader is more important than simplicity for the writer, and simplicity for readers with low prior experience with Vyper (and low prior experience with programming in general) is essential.
Because of this Vyper provides the following features:
- Bounds and overflow checking: On array accesses and arithmetic.
- Support for signed integers and decimal fixed-point numbers
- Decidability: It is possible to compute a precise upper bound for the gas consumption of any Vyper function call.
- Strong typing
- Small and understandable compiler code
- Limited support for pure functions: Anything marked constant is not allowed to change the state.
3. Python
Python is considered one of the best programming languages for Blockchain development. More importantly, if you are a new programmer in Blockchain, Python is one of the most suitable languages. However, as Python is an interpreted language, it may create some problems in the case of complex cryptographic operations. Besides, Python is an object-oriented language that helps to overcome many performance-related overheads.
Simultaneously, with Python as a developer, you can easily do prototyping for any long-winded coding required. Besides, Python also has huge open-source support, which is another good option for Blockchain development. Also, Python comes with many plugins, libraries, and other available resources that can suit almost every problem encountered by Blockchain development.
With a huge community of developers, Python’s popularity has been growing for years, and for blockchain also it is not an exception.
Benefits:
- Open-source support
- Easy to learn
- Access to a dynamic architecture
- Perfect for both base and scripting approaches
- Efficient for Prototyping, etc.
4. Go /Golang
Keeping system programming in mind, another programming language for Blockchain Go is designed, a general-purpose language. Go has many exciting features like it is strongly typed, has explicit support for concurrent programming, and garbage-collected. Go is widely used by Hyperledger, which is for enterprise blockchain, and not to mention, Hyperledger has made Go a popular language for creating blockchain applications. Go has received extra traction and popularity among developers due to its simplicity.
With Go, you can build fast and efficient Blockchain systems. This programming language for Blockchain is the best if you want to create a hyper ledger fabric. Furthermore, Go is a compiled and statically-typed programming language, which is perfect for Blockchain coding. It has other features for performance enhancement such as classes, generics, inheritance, constructors, annotations, and exceptions, etc. Most importantly, Go is easy to learn, and maybe that’s why you will find around 800,000+ developers on the Go language network all over the world.
5. C++
C++ is mostly the language used in all fields in the tech world, and Blockchain technology is not an exception! Because of its multiple capabilities, C++ has turned into a popular and useful programming language for Blockchain. Some of them are its primitive control over memory, semantics, advanced multi-threading, and other object-oriented features like runtime polymorphism, function overloading, etc.
As a result, being a Blockchain developer, you can easily mold data and functions together in a single module. This is very much similar to Blockchain molds the blocks with cryptographic chains. Interestingly, Blockchain’s first-ever implementation was originally written in C++ and is as popular as Bitcoin in Blockchain.
Benefits:
- Efficient CPU management and memory control
- Option to move semantics for copying data effectively.
- Ease of running parallel/non-parallel threads
- Code isolation for different data structures, and more.
- Compile-time polymorphism for enhanced performance
6. Java
Java is an all-rounder, and it provides stiff competition to C++ in usefulness and popularity. Java, with its abundant options of Application Programming Interface API, helps in Blockchain development. The main advantages of these APIs are you, as a developer no need to know the classes’ inside implementations, interfaces used in the API, however, can construct the applications.
Furthermore, the portability of Java is essential in Blockchain. As a result, you can write once and the Blockchain application anywhere. This particular feature makes Java perfect for Blockchain.
Benefits:
- Robust support for OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) methodology,
- Availability of ample of libraries.
- Ease of memory cleaning,
7. JavaScript
JavaScript, which is mainly used in web-related applications because of its security and speed feature, is not limited to web applications. There are many important factors for which JavaScript is ideal for Blockchain development. One of the features is that applications built-in JavaScript is less buggy, which is very important when writing apps for financial transactions.
The runtime environment of JavaScript, NodeJS makes it quite popular as a programming language for Blockchain development. Since almost all web systems support JavaScript, developers need not worry about its integration with other systems as part of the development, and they can focus on the application logic.
Benefits:
- Enhanced Scalability
- Easy compatibility
- Easier and earlier entry to market,
- Availability of multiple JavaScript frameworks
- No hassle of integration of respective resources, and more.
8. C#
C# has many similarities syntactically with Java and C++. Hence, it is ideal as a programming language for Blockchain. Initially created as a Microsoft language, C# is now quite a popular one of blockchain’s best programming languages. You can create a highly portable code using C# and run across multiple operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, etc. Furthermore, C# is an OOPs programming language; hence, Blockchain developers can obtain maximum performance from C# as a programming language for Blockchain.
Benefits:
- It is open-source.
- It empowers developers to write portable code across devices.
- Easy to understand syntaxes like C++ and Java.
- It is cost-effective.
9. Rholang
Rholang is a great programming language for Blockchain development like smart contracts. This language is more functional than the object-oriented approach and can solve many blockchain problems, which is why it is so popular. Rholang applications divide the whole program into a series of functions and sequentially solve them. Hence, as a functional programming language for Blockchain, Rholang is being the most popular in this category
10. Simplicity
Simplicity is a high-level programming language for Blockchain development, which was created for smart contracts. The language is ideal for both professional programmers and open source developers. As the name suggests, Simplicity is also focused on reducing the Bitcoin Script complex and low-level understanding. Since low-level logical components from Bitcoin developers are hide by Simplicity, it increases developers’ work capacity. As a result, it helps to create a much faster development period. Simplicity is also compatible with the open-source Blockchain platform with sidechain capabilities.
Final words
To conclude, we have mentioned some of Blockchain’s programming languages that we can consider ideal for entering the Blockchain world. Applying any one of them, we can flourish the opportunity. Each of these languages has its own potential and can be used for building different forms of Blockchain and cryptocurrency-based solutions. Now it’s time for you to decide and discover which language is the best for you. Moreover, what kind of Blockchain development you are in is also an important factor in deciding the correct programming language for Blockchain development.