If you ever wonder what it is like to be a developer to build STEEM apps.. I have a taste of it.
I've been doing a lot of unofficial research and development lately for the STEEM blockchain.
If any of you have ever learned how to code your own program... the easiest way for a lot of people to learn, is take an existing program, modify it and tweak it slightly, and see the results.
Many of my friends learned this way... and I find I learned that way myself.
In the early days people saw something like this:
print "HELLO WORLD";
.
...and the first thing they might do, is change it to
this:
print "GOODBYE WORLD";
.
...and marvel at how easy it was to change the software, with a simple text change. As a kid, that was fun to be able to change how a program behaved. Anyone could start off that way.
What was equally as nice, is if you had a basic program that did simple things like:
- Ask for your name
- Ask how old you were
It was trivial to add a third line, like:
- Also ask what is your favorite color
....that was easy, based on the first 2 examples. Soon you went from modifying 10 line programs, to easily being able to modify 50 line programs, and soon 500 line programs.
In doing my research in coding for steem, there is a wealth of resources out there. Maybe even an over abundance of them. ....but you'll see that it can be confusing if you read on...
When steem was still fairly "new", especially in early 2017... all kinds of STEEM apps were created. Unfortunately, most of them didn't pan out... Mostly because of these 3 reasons:
- Lack of funding
- Lack of adoption or interest by users
- Something better came along by someone else
- The developer themselves lost time and interest
- Steem changed, the API calls changed, they had to re-write code and gave up.
If you go to steemtools.com or steemproject.com you'll see a couple hundred different utilities, web tools, and open source (as well as closed source) projects that haven't been updated or maintained in the last 8 or 9 months.
You can learn what great projects these might have been if they kept going... but they simply stopped. Now what you end up with, is a lot of stale-dated projects, with stale-dated code... that may no longer even work with the steem blockchain today.
As a new developer, many people probably found these same projects, and it gets a little frustrating to see so much abandoned work.
New developments, like https://steemit.github.io/steemit-docs/ OR https://www.npmjs.com/package/steem OR https://developers.steem.io (outdated 2017?) exist to help give easy documentation to developers.
Want to know one of the best tutorials I found?
https://busy.org/@justinw/how-easy-it-is-to-develop-steem-blockchain-apps-with-video-tutorial
@justinw starts with a blank screen, types in a program to explain how to post an article to the STEEM blockchain just using simple javascript and html. -- He even has a youtube video with him doing it in only 9 minutes!
Wow! How quick and easy that was to understand! -- Great job!
One person named ghost wrote an issue on his github, asking him how to write a comment to a post, here:
https://github.com/jredbeard/steempostexample/issues/2
It went unanswered. :(
So the same user ghost wrote another request here, and it got answered this time:
https://github.com/steemit/steem-js/issues/369
** Note: The user named "ghost" apparently was deleted. That's a nickname for deleted user accounts. Why this person was deleted, I don't know.
...the point is... this....
You can witness many of developer attempts. You'll also see lots of abandoned projects.
You'll see people who start out on one roadmap, only to switch to some other project instead.
You'll discover underfunded projects, or projects that never seemed to build the audience they thought they'd have...
Being a steem developer today, especially an self-funded one, isn't easy. It is a lot of constant learning, but it is worth it!
So all of those past developers who have already given up --- or all those new developers that might get frustrated when learning their way for the first time..
Don't give up! It's worth it in the long run. :) Eventually you'll grow the audience and support you need if you keep at it.
If you are wondering what I'm currently working on:
- DanEvent for top 10 questions answered by Dan Larimer
- A multiuser steem game with Python and Flask (TBA)
- intelliwitness - a non-top 50 steem blockchain witness node that could really use 1/30 of your votes :)
(I am running a steem witness node named @intelliwitness to not only learn more about the steem blockchain, but to aid me in my development efforts too)
I'll keep you informed as I progress. :)
Off and on, I've tried to write bots and such for the blockchain, but have never gotten far. IIRC, the stumbling block on my last attempt was signing a transaction. I am using a language where there's not one of these ready-made Steem libraries to handle that for me, so I was trying to figure out how to do it "by hand," but I just don't know much about cryptography and got stuck somewhere. If you would happen to know of any resources which spells that part of it out in slow, easy-to-understand concepts for us crypto-n00bs, please share.
https://steem.developers.io seems to have a broken SSL cert.
Which language are you using? ...I mis-typed the URL. It is fixed. https://developers.steem.io
https://developers.steem.io/ seems to be a great resource. What are you thoughts on what is there?
Oh, it's nice to have it well organized for sure. What I'd especially like is some simple applications that are open source, out of the box, that invite people to use "as is", or feel free to modify as they need. That would be a really nice compliment to the existing documentation.
They have added a lot of tutorials and recipes to the portal. Have you looked at those?
Swift. My language of choice.
I could probably have done all the stuff I want to do if I chose to use JavaScript or Python instead, since those languages have ready-made libraries. I don't hate Python, but it will never be one of my favorite languages. JavaScript, on the other hand, can die in a fire.
LOL. Programmers are one of the most passionate people I've ever met. :) I hate Javascript myself. I've used it, but its just awful to depend on the client side CPU to do calculations.
The last code I wrote was for a Commodore 64 when I was a child. I can't imagine trying to wrap my head around all this now!
I have a sweet spot in my heart for the Commodore 64. When I write that blog article, I'll send you a little comment so you can come see it. :)
My brother made himself a bot and I have wanted to work on something just to know how it is done for the blockchain and what there is etc. This can help out and I might look into something soon. Thanks mate.
Have not heard a peep * from you good sir in a year bro' and wondering how you are? I am sorry I could only push this post Up a penny but got ya to tha $olid $7.00 mark with that! How are you man?
♥¸.•°”˜˜”°•.✫ B★E★A★U★T★I★F★U★L ✫¸.•°”˜˜”*°•.♥
Had some family troubles. Scroll my blog to see what was up.
I read the full article and my confusion starts from when i saw the line "can be confusiing if you read on" hahaha..lol