Thus millions of developers get opportunity to create smart contract programs running on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Microsoft has just added programming language, Solidity, into Visual Studio, thus considerably facilitating building stuff with Ethereum for millions of developers. To better understand the importance of the move, IBTimes compares that Visual Studio is to computer programmers what Microsoft Word is to journalists.

Solidity is a javascript-like programming language intended for creation of smart contract programs running on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. Developers can use Solidity to develop applications that implement self-enforcing business logic embodied in smart contracts, leaving a non-repudiable and authoritative record of transactions.

The integration of Solidity in Visual Studio, a rich and integrated development environment for creating applications for Windows, Android, and iOS, means adding the power of decentralised applications to the most powerful development platform so far. And this creates prerequisites for a new computing paradigm.

The integration of Solidity became possible due to collaboration of the Ethereum development studio ConsenSys and Microsoft. The integration is officially announced by co-founders of the company, Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Lubin, at //Build in San Francisco that is taking place from March 29th till April 2nd.

Vitalik Buterin said: “Making it easier for developers to build applications on top of Ethereum through developer tools has always been one of our primary interests and focuses, and the integration of Solidity in Visual Studio will help bring Ethereum to a very large developer community. I am looking forward to seeing the results that this collaboration will bring.”

Joseph Lubin added: “ConsenSys has been working closely with Microsoft to bring Ethereum-focused development tools to the immense and diverse developer community of Microsoft. Solidity is a high-level language for programming the smart contract elements of decentralized applications on Ethereum.”

Now millions of developers will be able to start working on their applications immediately by just single click deployment of Ethereum blockchains on the Microsoft Azure cloud available, and integrated development in Visual Studio. Thus the whole complexity of first standing up a development blockchain can be avoided.

Andrew Keys, Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise, said: “Microsoft has been an excellent partner of ConsenSys and evangelist for Ethereum. Solidity integration in Visual Studio will serve as another step towards drastically reducing the barriers to entry of rapid blockchain prototyping for millions of developers. Unveiling this offering at Microsoft’s //Build conference is the perfect venue to educate enterprises on the value of the Ethereum blockchain.”

According to the latest data, the price of Eth, a cryptocurrency that rivals bitcoin, has shown a surge of 1,000 % over the past three months. The growth of value has attracted attention from such tech giants as IBM, Microsoft and JPMorgan Chase. The Ethereum system is similar to bitcoin one while it is based on the blockchain technology. The system eliminates middlemen, what significantly increases the speed of payments and reduces settlement costs.