How I learned and mastered Blockchain Development in two weeks

I started my career as a support engineer filling numbers in excel sheet, but love for technology has always kept me awake and brought me where I am today. Learning and mastering new technologies is a challenge that I love to take and complete it in no time.

Not long ago, a dear friend of mine introduced me to this new world - “Blockchain” and from that point, there is no turning back. It has become my newest obsession and the more I learn, the more I get addicted to it, such is the power of blockchain.

I have always loved sharing my knowledge to my friends and colleagues, this brings the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in me. It is now one of the purpose of my life.

(No, I am not the one in the pic :P)

If you are new to this world, I hope this article helps you in making your path to become a successful blockchain developer a lot easier.

Phase 1 : Understanding the Basics -

It is very important to familiarise oneself with the concepts, basics and fundamentals of technology that they want to work on, specially when a technology like blockchain is so new and revolutionary in itself and evolving at a very rapid pace.

How is it different from other technologies and what makes it so powerful.

There are certain terms that everyone should familiarise themselves with, specially if they are beginners -

Blockchain: The blockchain is a chain of blocks where each block contains data of value without any central supervision. It is cryptographically secure and immutable.

Decentralised: Blockchain is said to be decentralised because there is no central authority supervising anything.

Consensus Mechanism: The mechanism by which a decentralised network comes to a consensus on certain matters.

Miners: Users who use their computational power to mine for blocks.

Apart from this, you may also want to brush up on how the following works -

• Encryption/Decryption
• Hashing
• Digital Signature
• Forking

Phase 2 : Learning the technicalities of Blockchain -

Whether you want to work on cryptocurrencies or you want to invest in them, it is important to understand how the ecosystem works and how exactly the crypto economics work out. Understanding the crypto economics is very important for staying on top of the game as one of the major use-cases of Blockchain is in the cryptocurrency space and all the ICOs are also based on this principle. The knowledge of crypto economics is extremely important while evaluating different ICOs to make sure that their economics is also well thought of apart from their team, idea and other criteria.

Next up would be to understand how the cryptography works and how the blockchain is secured using cryptography. Understanding -

• What are digital signatures?
• What is symmetric and asymmetric cryptography?
• What is Hashing?

Get acquainted to more technical terms and read more about blockchain.

Read the Bitcoin and Ethereum White-papers to start with.

Learn how the process works.

How the flow of money/transactions happen on the blockchain.

Possibly, create an account on an exchange that your country supports, buy and sell some bitcoins or other altcoins, but don’t invest too much before doing your own research!

How things work in the blockchain/decentralised world are different from how things work traditionally!

Phase 3: Writing a Very Simple Blockchain program -

This step is where you actually start getting your hands dirty into blockchain coding.

You can create a small sample application on a simple language like Javascript to understand how a blockchain works. That will give you a more clear idea.

When you create and/or maintain a public blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum, it is very difficult because you need to take care of -

• Security
• Resource Management
• Performance
• Isolation

Phase 4: Educate yourself with Smart Contracts and Dapps -

Next, we can start reading more about Dapps.

• What are Dapps?
• How are the different from existing apps?
• What are smart contracts?
• Learning to write your first smart contract.

Phase 5: Keep yourself updated on the latest and upcoming technologies and updates in blockchain -

As you know, the blockchain industry and community is evolving at a very rapid pace. What was new yesterday is very old today, so it is really very important to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest news in and around blockchain development and updates.

You are now ready to launch your career in blockchain development.

Follow me to stay updated as I plan to keep publishing new content every week to help new developers shape their future :)

I am planning to write something about what I have learnt and how everyone can quickly learn Hedera Hashgraph technology, will publish an article soon.

Please add a comment below if you want to know more or need help on how to shape your career and different articles and links to get started with blockchain development.

Please let me know if you would like to see video tutorials on blockchain development.