Getting Started with Web3 Development

February 2018 Update

We released the first version of this course in September 2017. Back then, the latest version of Truffle was version 3, and the best Ethereum node emulator was testrpc, on the command line. 

Then, in November 2017, the Truffle team released both Truffle 4 and a new user interface for testrpc called Ganache. Those tools had a big impact on the development lifecycle, so we took this opportunity to completely rewrite and re-shoot the practical part of this course.

We also took this opportunity to integrate most of the comments and feedbacks we got in the Q&A section of this course. So all the details you needed to troubleshoot issues are now part of the content.

This results in a consequent update with quite a few improvements:

• Full Truffle 4 coverage, including Truffle debug and Truffle develop
  
• Full Ganache coverage
• MetaMask workarounds, tips and tricks
• All the content has been tested on MacOS, Linux and Windows (PowerShell)
• Code is not copy-pasted anymore, we type everything live to make it easier to follow along

Note that the old content will remain online for a few weeks, and then we will unpublish them so that students don’t need to watch all the old content to complete the course and get the Udemy certificate.

If you notice any issue, bug, outdated content, missing link or resource, please let us know in the Q&A section of this course.

Welcome to “Become a Blockchain Developer with Ethereum and Solidity”!

This course is a complete introduction to decentralized application (Dapp) development on the Ethereum blockchain using the Solidity language and the Truffle build framework.

No need to know anything about the blockchain, you should just have some basic software development experience. Whether you have already written some code for backend, web or mobile applications, it should be enough to become a blockchain developer thanks to this course.

The blockchain is all the rage these days, and there is a lot of theoretical or anticipative talk around it, but this course will help you get your hands dirty with actual code in order to build your first decentralized application. This is the kind of skill that can get you an actual job as a blockchain developer, something that is in skyrocketing demand right now.

Have you ever looked back on the nineties, thinking you would have loved to be a part of the web revolution. Well, stop dreaming: the blockchain is here and it promises to be even bigger than the web or even the mobile revolution.

What we cover

• We briefly cover the philosophy of the blockchain, both as a crypto-currency system and as a development platform
• Then we will explain how blockchains work, what are their main components and how its ecosystem is structured
• After that we quickly go over the main cryptographic tools you need to understand
• We continue with a description of the perfect development environment, including tools that are used by most professional blockchain developers
• And the biggest part of the course is dedicated to guiding you through the iterative creation, development, testing and deployment of the ChainList decentralized application

The tools we use

• Ethereum of course
• The Metamask Chrome extension
• The Solidity smart contract language
• The Truffle build and test framework (Truffle 4)
• The Ganache Ethereum node emulator
• Github Pages
• Atom (text editor)
• The Rinkeby test network

We deliberately don’t reinvent the wheel or develop our own build tools because it didn’t seem very pragmatic to do that. That’s why we demonstrate the use of development tools like Truffle and Ganache that offer a lot of very powerful features, even though they evolve very often.

Most of the videos were shot on a Mac, but we give detailed instructions on how to set up your environment on Linux and Windows, and all the other lessons have been tested and adapted with a few OS-specific instructions.