Truffle: A New Development Environment For Ethereum Coders

Gaining insights as to how a blockchain works and what it is capable of is invaluable to developers, business owners, and government officials. There is a lot of focus on the Ethereum blockchain in particular as of late, and Truffle will act as a developer environment and testing framework for this technology. This should make life easier for Ethereum developers, as well as for those who seek to gain a deeper understanding of how this technology works.

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Truffle Offers A Lot of Tools

As more and more people take notice of the Ethereum blockchain, it only makes sense to see new platforms emerge that aim to help people understand the technology. Compared to the Bitcoin blockchain, certain technological features are — for now — only available to Ethereum developers.

Terms such as “smart contracts” and “blockchain-as-a-service” are thrown around quite a lot, yet hardly anyone fully understands what this means. A smart contract will serve as an agreement between multiple parties, which will be overseen by a computer rather than a human third-party. The settlement will occur automatically, and disputes should be settled much quicker, as all of the evidence is processed automatically by the software.

Blockchain-as-a-service, on the other hand, is a developer sandbox offered by companies such as Microsoft. Such a service lets any coder in the world set up a Microsoft Azure virtual machine, through which they can interact with the Ethereum blockchain without running the software on their computer. However, Truffle works slightly different, as it is not a blockchain-as-a-service kind of project.

Getting involved with Ethereum technology can be scary, as developers need to have a good understanding of the Ethereum protocol in the first place. This is where Truffle comes in, as this platform is a development environment with a vast library of guides and tools for aspiring coders, and topics such as testing smart contracts and writing external scripts are covered on the platform.

But Truffle would not be a developer platform without providing a testing framework for written code. While there is a lot of focus on the educational side of things, those developers looking for a more hands-on approach are welcome to the Truffle platform as well. The service supports automated contract testing, public and private networks, and an interactive console. Additionally, Truffle supports JavaScript, ES6, SASS, and JSX.

Community Input Is Important

Albeit services such as Truffle aim to bring more Ethereum knowledge to consumers all over the world, there is only so much the team can do by themselves. Tools designed for the community require feedback from the users, which is why Truffle has set up a dedicated Gitter page, where developers can hang out. Using this service is free of charge, and requires a GitHub account to participate.

As Truffle collects more user feedback, future improvements and enhancements can be made to the platform over time. Right now, there seems to be plenty of information on tap to get developers excited about Ethereum and smart contracts, but that is only the tip of the iceberg of blockchain technology.

What are your thoughts on Truffle? Will this platform be a valuable addition to Ethereum, and perhaps even get more developers interested in bitcoin as well? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Truffle

Images courtesy of Truffle, Shutterstock

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