You’ve decided to venture into programming. The next question is “Which programming language should I learn?”

In general, language and tooling matter far less than actual experience. Instead, programmers who are able to perform critical thinking are best suited to programming. Critical thinking skills enable individuals to analyze a problem and develop a functional solution in any programming language.

For instance, my initial foray into learning C# was a struggle, particularly the tedious “Car car = new Car()” C# tutorials. It took me weeks to achieve a good grasp of the fundamentals. Once I did, I began to master arrays, collections, and other common C# concepts. It wasn’t long until I was writing programs for hobby projects that involved solving complex problems.

Solving a problem using a programming language one barely understands can be very empowering. My ongoing success gave me the patience to push through tedious tutorials, a necessary prelude for solving more complex problems in the future. Regardless of what language is chosen, I believe that any serious student facing a (seemingly) insurmountable problem will experience a similar sense of empowerment.

As one becomes increasingly familiar with a programming language, he/she invariably becomes better equipped at analyzing a problem and finding a solution for it using that language. While other programming languages may or may not allow for a similar solution, a confident programmer can efficiently spin his/her skills to great avail no matter what obstacles are presented.

Consequently, highly experienced software developers typically feel little hesitation about entering the blockchain development space. However, they might feel chagrined to learn that each blockchain project limits what language they can use.

Most projects require extensive knowledge in at least one of these languages: C++, JavaScript, Python, and Solidity. At this point, the experienced developer must either know or learn one of these languages if they intend to get involved with a project (unless the project somehow integrates their preferred programming language).

Learning Additional Languages

Determined to contribute to blockchain development, I pushed forward in learning additional languages. C# is rarely used within the blockchain space, except when implementing a blockchain project for a specific end-user application. I wanted to learn how to contribute to the blockchain project itself – not just integrate blockchain into my own C# applications. Consequently, I’ve gotten much more familiar with C++, QML, and JavaScript.

In addition to learning the syntax and fundamental use cases for these programming languages, I also became more knowledgeable about their individual benefits and downsides. By observing how different blockchain projects employed similar language syntax, I came to better understand the blockchain programming space. And since I was highly experienced in C# (my foundational language), adding other programming languages to my toolkit simply required memorizing their syntax.

However, the time spent learning these additional languages could have been eliminated had these blockchain projects supported my foundational language (C#). Blockchain projects that make it easy for developers to integrate their preferred programming language into a DApp (or another project) will inevitably increase their adoption rate. Such projects enable developers to employ unique solutions that would otherwise go missing from the project.

XTRABYTES is one such project, a new DApps-ready platform that refers to itself as code-agnostic. For developers intent on entering the blockchain space quickly, XTRABYTES will provide them with the easy and unfettered access required to do so.