Solana ‘memecoin frenzy’ prompts uptick in Rust dev demand

August 7, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Artbitrum founder says Stylus is a game changer for EVMs

September 4, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Arbitrum

The Arbitrum-building Offchain Labs co-founder Ed Felten said its new tool would allow more seasoned devs to build EVMs, possibly making them safer.

A recently released tool for Arbitrum developers could onboard more devs to Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM) and improve its code, says Offchain Labs co-founder Ed Felten.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at Korea Blockchain Week, Felten lauded Arbitrum Stylus, which Offchain released on a testnet on Aug. 31, allowing developers to use languages including Rust, C, and C++ to build Arbitrum apps.

Felten said Stylus would allow non-Web3 native devs to “use the languages and the development tools that they're used to.”

Today is Arbitrum Day

Last year we took one giant leap with the launch of Arbitrum Nitro.

Today we’re excited to announce that we are taking another big leap with the release of the code and public testnet for Arbitrum Stylus. https://t.co/NaxOuir5WH
— Offchain Labs (@OffchainLabs) August 31, 2023

He added it would onboard “a lot more developers” to building EVMs with more mature tools and cited the larger number of devs that program in Rust over Solidity — the latter being the programming language for building Ethereum smart contracts.

“One of the things that comes from those much more mature tools is it's much faster. So it's 10 to 15 times faster for typical computations than EVM.”

According to Felten, the benefit of supporting legacy languages is the amount of code that already exists written in languages such as Rust which is already “battle-tested and audited.”

Felten identified Rust as a language that was designed to help catch development errors, with its tools being “really good at reducing the odds that you'll introduce a bug in your code.”

“You can just use it. Now you can use that directly on-chain. You're gonna build less from scratch and you're gonna be able to take better advantage of things that other people have done.”

Felten also highlighted the gas cost was 10 to 15 times lower, which allows for “more complex stuff [to be] done in the same transaction” and opens up the possibility of being able to perform iPhone-compatible cryptography.

Felten explained that iPhones use a different digital signature standard than Ethereum, which is not supported well, so “cryptography on Ethereum that’s compatible with the iPhone has an extremely high gas cost.”

“But in Stylus, you can drive that down so it becomes really feasible. It’s not prohibitively expensive.”

This could give way to having a crypto wallet integrated on an iPhone — unlocking the ability to use Apple’s FaceID to verify wallet transactions similar to bank card purchases.

Other use cases Felten saw with the lower gas fees were higher levels of realism in blockchain-based games and the on-chain evaluation of machine learning models against live application data.

Ultimately, Felten thought Stylus could help burgeoning projects ship faster as allowing for mature programming languages means they may be better protected against bugs, and errors along with having extra performance.

“You don't have to squeeze out every last tiny bit of performance in your code and that also reduces a lot of friction for developing protocols.”

Magazine: How to protect your crypto in a volatile market — Bitcoin OGs and experts weigh in

Additional reporting by Andrew Fenton.

History of Python programming language

July 24, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Delve into the remarkable evolution of Python, and learn how it grew to become a prominent and beloved programming language in the tech world.

Python is an interpreted, object-oriented and high-level programming language created by Guido van Rossum. The language’s design philosophy emphasizes code readability and simplicity, making it a popular choice for beginners and experienced developers.

Python’s journey began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and it has since evolved into one of the most widely used and beloved programming languages across various domains.

Birth of Python

Van Rossum, a Dutch programmer, started working on Python in December 1989 during his Christmas holidays while working at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) in the Netherlands. His goal was to create a language that would be easy to read, write and maintain.

In my high school senior year I was voted "least likely to invent his own programming language."
— Guido van Rossum (@gvanrossum) April 24, 2023

Early development

Early in the 1990s, Python continued to be developed, and on February 20, 1991, it had its first public release, version 0.9.0 — the first time the programming community saw Python. The language design used elements from several other programming languages, including ABC, Modula-3, C, and others, to produce a flexible and expressive syntax.

Python 2 vs. Python 3

Python 2.0, which included several new features and enhancements, was released in 2000. However, as the language developed, some design choices in Python 2 made it more difficult to maintain and advance the language.

In response, Python 3 was created and launched on Dec. 3, 2008. With the introduction of backward-incompatible improvements to enhance consistency and eliminate unnecessary functionality, Python 3 represented a substantial advancement.

However, Python 3 is not fully backward compatible with Python 2 — which has reached its end of life and is no longer actively maintained — requiring some code adjustments when migrating between versions.

fwiw, I just noticed that filter() does work differently in Python 2 vs 3.

Python 2:
filter(lambda x: x % 2 == 0, range(10))
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]

Python 3:
>>> a = filter(lambda x: x % 2 == 0, range(10))
>>> a
<filter object at 0x7f53364a7130>
>>> list(a)
[0, 2, 4, 6, 8]
— Anatoly Karp (@akarp) March 3, 2021

The most recent stable release of Python 3.10.4, the fourth maintenance release of Python 3.10, was officially published on March 24, 2023.

Increased popularity

Python’s popularity has grown over the years due to its readability, adaptability and simplicity of usage. Its clear and simple syntax was well-liked by developers because it simplified writing and understanding code.

The availability of a sizable standard library and several third-party packages via the Python Package Index accelerated Python’s acceptance. These applications include web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, scripting, automation and more.

Related: How to learn Python with ChatGPT

Python in the modern era

Python had become one of the most popular programming languages by the 2010s, and its use has only grown since then. Python’s thriving community and environment were boosted by the adoption of the language by several IT businesses, startups, and organizations for their projects.

What is Python called Python?

Van Rossum named Python in honor of the British comic troupe Monty Python’s Flying Circus, who he was a fan of.

Despite its humorous beginnings, Python has developed into a serious and important programming language that powers important projects and systems all around the world. However, the amusing association with Monty Python has remained a charming feature of Python’s past.

What should Python not be used for?

Python is a powerful and versatile programming language that can be used for a variety of purposes. However, there are several circumstances where it might not be the best option. Some examples are real-time systems, resource-intensive software, mobile app development, high-frequency trading, system-level programming, memory-intensive software, mobile or console gaming, and certain cryptographic algorithms.

Nonetheless, it is crucial to remember that using the correct libraries and tools can frequently help overcome Python’s restrictions. The choice of programming language ultimately depends on the project’s needs, the team’s experience and the development goals. Python is still a well-liked and helpful language that can be used alone or in combination with other languages to accomplish many tasks.

Starkware Plans to Open Source Key Tech Linked to Starknet Prover

February 6, 2023 Bitcoin.com

StarkNet overhauls Cairo programming language to drive developer adoption

January 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Cairo

Ethereum layer-2 scaling platform StarkNet has revamped its Cairo programming language to enable easier onboarding of new developers.

Ethereum layer-2 scaling platform StarkNet has overhauled its in-house Cairo coding language to make Web3 development accessible to developers.

An announcement shared with Cointelegraph outlined the upgrades to Cairo 1.0, which is touted to emulate characteristics of the popular programming language Rust. The overhaul intends to allow developers with general coding experience to begin building decentralized applications on StarkNet’s Ethereum layer-2 network.

StarkWare co-founder and president Eli Ben-Sasson told Cointelegraph that making layer-2 development more accessible to developers of varying backgrounds was the main reason for Cairo’s revamp:

“Primary drivers were safety and ease of use, and conducting the overhaul presented a terrific opportunity to remove the entry for developers with conventional language backgrounds.”

Technical specifications outlined in the Jan. 5 launch encompass a host of improvements to Cairo’s language. This includes improved syntax and language constructs, a holistic type system, intuitive libraries, optimized code and strong typing by demanding specification of data types.

StarkNet highlights Sierra as the main addition to Cairo’s overhaul, which stands for Safe Intermediate Representation. Sierra acts as a new intermediate representation layer between Cairo 1.0 and Cairo byte code.

As Ben Sasson explained, Sierra is an important aspect of ensuring a permissionless network. The upgrade enables reverted transactions to be included in StarkNet blocks, helping the protocol to avoid adding complex ‘crypto-economic mechanisms.’

Ben Sasson said that Sierra will allow StarkNet to ‘inherit the full censorship-resistance of Ethereum’ and mainly protects against Sequencer Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Ben-Sasson pioneered ZK-STARK cryptography alongside other computer scientists. Zero-Knowledge Scalable Transparent Arguments of Knowledge is a proof system that encrypts and verifies transaction data to provide security, scalability and resistance to quantum computing.

According to StarkNet, Cairo is the fourth most popular smart contract language by total value locked. It is the base of applications that have processed over 300 million transactions, minted 90 million NFTs and facilitated $790 million worth of trades settled on Ethereum.

programming language