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Hackernoon logo11 Best Ethereum Development Tools to Grow Your Stack by@zanewithspoon

11 Best Ethereum Development Tools to Grow Your Stack

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@zanewithspoonZane Witherspoon

Blockchain tech is getting chief officers hot and heavy. When itโ€™s your turn to show them your stack, will you distress or impress?

Hereโ€™s 11 tools for building on the Ethereum blockchain

1. Mistโ€Šโ€”โ€Šnothing gets them going like pulling out yourย wallet

Use Mist to create wallets you wonโ€™t lose right when your Uber is pullingย up

Store Ether, send transactions, deploy contracts and more with Mist. You can use the native application to play around on the blockchain or testnet while you get the hang of this whole blockchain thing. Super useful for quick transactions.

2. Gethโ€Šโ€”โ€Šwhen itโ€™s time to bust aย node

Drop that GUI downย low

When youโ€™re ready to ditch the training wheels, switching to the command line will make you look like a real hacker. Geth can do anything Mist can do plus some important functionality like serving as an RPC endpoint to connect to the blockchain over http.

3. Parityโ€Šโ€”โ€Špromote your side client toย bae

Itโ€™s my parity I can cry if I wantย to

Parity is an ethereum client written in the new low level language Rust. Formed by Dr. Gavin Wood, the former CTO of Ethereum, this client is a fast, lightweight way to run an Ethereum node. Run Parity and hop over to localhost:8080 to play around in their web UI. Honestly, itโ€™s a pain in the ass to install, but once itโ€™s up and running Parity is a big upgrade from Geth.

4. MetaMaskโ€Šโ€”โ€Šfurry fun keeps chrome interesting

The foxy doggo chrome extension is goodย boy

MetaMask is ๐Ÿ If youโ€™re building a รapp you actually want people to use. MetaMask support is a must-have. This little chrome extension drastically improves how easily people can interact with your รapp (distributed app). If you havenโ€™t already, go download MetaMask and try it out for yourself. Iโ€™ll wait.

5. Web3.jsโ€Šโ€”โ€Šintroduce your รapp to local nodes in yourย area

send nodes

If you want to build a รapp, youโ€™re going to get very personal with the web3 library. Web3.js is going to be the interface youโ€™ll use to interact with blockchain if youโ€™re trying to make something people wonโ€™t hate.

6. Truffleโ€Šโ€”โ€Šskip right to the goodย stuff

Eventually you learn to love theย taste

If youโ€™ve got a tool belt full of development tools, Truffle is your sonic screwdriver. Truffle provides the building blocks to quickly create, compile, deploy, and test blockchain apps.

7. Javascript testrpcโ€Šโ€”โ€Šdonโ€™t blow your Ether prematurely

An Ether saved is an Etherย earned

Before you start throwing your ether around like ones in the club ๐Ÿ’ธ try testing your code in a test blockchain. Since writing to the blockchain costs Ether, itโ€™s a good idea to test out your smart contracts in a test blockchain spending test Ether.

8. Solcโ€Šโ€”โ€Šbecause different languages only makes it moreย exciting

Iโ€™ve got a thing forย byte-rs

Solidity code may be designed to look like javascript, but you still have to compile it. Solc is your translator from the smart contract language solidity to Ethereumโ€™s byte-code.

9. Soliumโ€Šโ€”โ€Šchemical free solidity cleaningย solution

Your mom doesnโ€™t live in the blockchain. Donโ€™t expect her to cleanup yourย mess.

Your mom doesnโ€™t live in the blockchain. Donโ€™t expect her to clean up your mess. Since you pay by the size for all of your writes to the blockchain, contracts included, itโ€™s in your interest to make sure youโ€™re not wasting your money uploading shitty code.

10.Ether.campโ€Šโ€”โ€Šyou can do it onlineย now?

this one time, at ether.camp

Microsoft has been stepping up their blockchain game. They recently started offering BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) in their Azure cloud suite and theyโ€™re bringing more heat with ether.camp, a fully fledged Ethereum IDE.

11. BlockAppsโ€Šโ€”โ€Šitโ€™s not stalking if they gave you their address,ย right?

Every รapp has a fantasy of bringing in a 3rdย party

Everything in the blockchain is visible by everyone, so donโ€™t you want to take a peek? BlockApps has some API endpoints that are pretty nifty for things like checking wallet balances, writing transactions, and reading contract states. With just some addresses, you can go all Sherlock Holmes on peopleโ€™s wallets.

The following are tools not on the original list but still deserve recognition

12. Embarkโ€Šโ€”โ€Šhop on for a ride you wonโ€™tย forget

Logo comingย soon

Need some structure in your รapp? Embark is another popular framework for building, testing, and deploying your app.

โ€œ[Embark is] a framework for developing Decentralized Applications that is one of the most popular tools to develop Ethereumย DAppsโ€

13. Zeppelinโ€Šโ€”โ€Špractice safe smart contracts

Donโ€™t be a DAO-ner, secure your smartย contract

Itโ€™s one thing to use โ€œpassword123โ€ for your personal bank account (plz donโ€™t), but when youโ€™re writing a smart contract that holds other peopleโ€™s money you want to be sure itโ€™s secure. Zeppelin is library for writing secure contracts. Especially easy when youโ€™re already working with truffle.

Special thanks goes out to Jim Huang for helping me compile the list. And thank you to Tim, Brandon, Lyndon, Casey, and Arjun for driving HappyCha.in forward and inspiring me to work harder every day.โค๏ธ

If you found this article useful or entertaining please drop a โค๏ธ or a share. Please comment with any feedback or tools youโ€™d like to see added to the list.

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