Software Development in a Connected World

What's the best toolset to learn smart contract programming? The main thing is which blockchain you are targeting, but if you don't have a preference there already, Ethereum should be the default choice. Not only it's the oldest (and in my opinion mature as compared to others), there is a lot of traction in the industry around Ethereum. See, for example, the members directory of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance . So, if you are choosing Ethereum, a nice way to start programming for the Ethereum blockchain is learn Solidity. One nice thing about Solidity is the browser based Remix IDE . There are other ways, but Remix is preferred as the first exposure to Solidity and smart contracts. Can you give me a very simply Solidity contract example? Here is a completely impractical decentralized world-population counter in Solidity: Basically, we have created a decentralized storage variable of type unsigned int, which is part of the blockchain. No matter which node you choose

Is Ethereum also a cryptocurrency? Well, formally speaking, Ethereum is a blockchain based distributed platform, and Ether is the currency used on that blockchain. Is Ether same as Bitcoin? Just like Bitcoin, Ethereum blockchain also needs mining (i.e., proof-of-work and thus, computational resources to mine the blocks). Miners are rewarded with Ether. But Ethereum also has the concept of smart contracts and an associated virtual machine to execute the smart contracts. Besides rewarding miners with Ether, computational resources consumed by the code executed on Ethereum Virtual Machine is controlled by spending Ether , which is termed as gas . I understand the Ethereum blockchain supports smart contracts, but is Ether similar to Bitcoin? The answer to " why we need a cryptocurrency? " is different for the two blockchains. For Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is the reason why blockchain exists; i.e., the sole purpose of the blockchain is to store bitcoins. For