Because of its safety, speed, and transparency blockchain is the technology that is gaining more and more attention every day and could be the leading technology in controlling payments in the future.
The amount of new blockchain products is also growing day by day and companies are looking to improve already existing technology. This blockchain technology craze is also providing a huge amount of developers with well-paid jobs, but there arises one question and that is which language is better for developing blockchains.
In the field, there are multiple languages being deployed, but in this post, we will mostly cover only C++ and JavaScript. This post will go over the pros and cons, learning difficulties, and usefulness of these languages.
JavaScript
JavaScript is an interpreted language. The most important thing about JavaScript is that dynamic, prototype-based, weakly typed, and is one of the leading web development technologies.
In just a few years JavaScript has become really popular and a vast amount of companies are working on new frameworks for JavaScript such as angular, react, vue, and node.js which helps developers to work more with the code.
Pros of JavaScript:
- JS is object-oriented
- It is prototype-based
- It supports functional programming
- It is very popular and useful and almost every company working with IT needs JavaScript within its frameworks.
Cons of JavaScript:
- JavaScript is dynamic
- It is weakly typed, but this problem can be solved with the use of typescript
Difficulty Level
JavaScript is not the hardest to learn and use, actually it is relatively easy to learn and start working with it. To start working with JS you just need to learn the basics and you will learn advanced features later by working with it. A really helpful thing regarding the learning process of JavaScript is that there is plenty of material on the internet that will give you the knowledge needed to start working with it.
Use of JavaScript in Blockchain
The most useful place where the use of JS is necessary is web3.js and ethereum.js which allow developers to connect their frontend of the application with the Ethereum network and smart contracts.
The next popular way for developers to use JavaScript is with Hyperledger Fabric SDK for node.js. Hyperledger Fabric SDK is a framework used often in large companies and corporations.
Also, a very common use for JavaScript would be lighting apps which are built on super-fast networks on top of the bitcoin blockchain. Also, a fair mention is the Raiden network which is a high speed infrastructure built on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
C++
C++ is an object oriented, high speed, strongly static typed compiled language. Really important fact about C++ is that it is very efficient and has access to hardware.
Pros of C++:
- High speed
- It is similar to C
- It has strongly static types
- It is independent
- Multiplatform
Cons of C++:
- It is complex and sometimes troublesome to debug
- Does not support garbage collection
- Not easy to learn
- Has code redundancy
Difficulty level
C++ is harder to learn and is overall more challenging than C which is a moderate-difficulty language.
Is not a suggestable choice for beginners to start with.
Use of C++ is blockchain
C++ despite its difficulty is actually used in a large amount of popular and very important blockchain projects like:
- Bitcoin
- Ripple (A centralized but ultra fast cryptocurrency)
- Litecoin
- Monero
- Eos (A blockchain network with EOS cryptocurrency)
- Stellar (A payment network)
- QTUM (something like bitcoin and Ethereum at the same time)
- Cpp Ethereum
Conclusion
Both languages provide developers with a vast amount of options to work with. JavaScript would probably be the best choice for people that want to start working with the development of blockchain technology and has fewer disadvantages than C++, but this does not mean that C++ is not useful as well and perhaps more experienced developers would prefer to work with C++ based blockchain technology development because C++ can provide access to hardware and high speeds and is being used in huge already existing blockchain projects like bitcoin.
