My first impression of Solidity, the most popular programming language that runs on Ethereum’s virtual machine, was that the language was quite approachable. As someone who has been working with languages like Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, and Java for 16 years, I was able read it immediately and started writing some basic smart contracts within a few days.



I’ve been around long enough to witness several programming language ecosystems mature. Code reuse tends to be at the center of this maturity, as the community builds increasingly powerful code libraries and frameworks on top of previous work. Perl has CPAN, Ruby has RubyGems, and Javascript has npm. It’s clear that code reuse in the Solidity ecosystem is still in its infancy.



Recognizing this void, my first month at ConsenSys I focused on filling it. I’m assuming that Solidity will follow in the footsteps of its modern predecessors and benefit significantly from the distribution of foundational libraries and frameworks. I started with an exploration into where Solidity reuse is already underway.