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We’re launching a technical Ethereum community blog – the Ethereum Blog Overflow. We’re starting with setting the focus, scope and audience for the blog. Ideally, this will be completely driven by the community.

I’ll suggest Solidity tips, patterns and good habits for newcomers learning the ropes. More importantly, what do you think it should be about? Everything Ethereum is fair game.

We would especially like to hear from new members of the Ethereum community. Did you just recently learn something the hard way and wish someone had explained it? Are you looking for an explainer about something? The expertise and generosity in this community never ceases to amaze. We can probably find someone happy to unfold your topic clearly and completely.

In addition, we are looking for writers and we would love to hear from contributors who want to showcase their acquired expertise. Send us your ideas! Everything Ethereum is welcome.

For the beginning, we will try to write up at least one post per month. But this can scale anytime based on demand and content supply. Please reply to this thread, if you have blog ideas or want to contribute!

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    A few tips: if possible think in mappings, not arrays. If you're coding locally, make sure you are mining on your testnet, otherwise nothing will happen. It's usually better to use an IDE like ether.camp for proof of concepts. If you can, avoid strings and especially floating point numbers. Define a denominator and discretize your floating point numbers.
    – Symeof
    Commented Feb 10, 2017 at 11:26
  • This Post looks a like good candidate for migration to the blog: ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2940/…
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Feb 13, 2017 at 19:52
  • Another candidate: ethereum.stackexchange.com/review/close/4683
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Feb 14, 2017 at 18:26
  • I posted a contribution in Meta. Curious if people agree we can use the Meta site for this purpose. I can commit to more little blurbs on Solidity patterns. Please let me know what you think. meta.ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/443/…
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Mar 12, 2017 at 3:26
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    @RobHitchens Unfortunately, per my note below you will have to find another platform to host this. Meta support has long been the proposed go-to solution for everything from big-lists to polls to off-topic posts (i.e. "If we don't want this on the main site, let's just post it to Meta"). But Meta support is not an appropriate place to post "Everything Ethereum". I would love to see native support for things like articles/blog posts, resource big-lists, polls, etc built right into the system, but trying to gerrymander a blogging platform into your support site is not a sustainable solution.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Mar 15, 2017 at 14:44
  • @RobertCartaino Thank you.
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Mar 15, 2017 at 21:54
  • This is my first comment on Meta Ethereum ("meth"?) so I apologise if it's off-topic or somehow violating a guideline, but I can think of a Medium.com publication. Publications allow for various authors to post in their own name while still grouping the articles as a coherent set.
    – David Ammouial
    Commented May 23, 2017 at 4:39
  • @DavidAmmouial Thanks for the idea.
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented May 23, 2017 at 9:16

5 Answers 5

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Suggestions:

From Zero to productive in Dapp development

In any programming space it always seems to take ages to set up a realistic dev enviroment (beyond hello world) and get to minimal starter application which can be extended and or provision a dev team with what they need to work. Idea would be an article or series which gets newbies up to speed.

  • Installing Geth/parity
  • Installing testRPC
  • Setting up a private chain for development.
    • Genesis block
    • Command line parameters
    • Multiple nodes
    • Monitoring (Private: ethstats.net, chain explorer, cakeshop)
  • Geth console foo. What can you do from the command line.
    • Compiling contracts
    • Contract ABIs
    • Transactions and calls
    • Scripting the geth console (an often overlooked gem)
    • Raw Json RPC with curl / python
    • Web3.js stand alone
    • Compiling and calling a contract from a simple web page without framework
  • Truffle / Embark / ether.camp Roll your own (Also provide basis for choice between these since it is easy to spent ages not deciding)
    • Simple contract
    • Interacting contracts
    • Packages
    • Configuring js build process for React.js or Vue.js
    • Testing (The examples rarely go into testing of contracts)
    • Dev, test, deploy cycle
  • Web3.js Transaction management patterns.
    • How to deal with transaction & blockchain state while keeping the interface responsive using Reflux or Vuex
  • Hello IPFS & SWARM
    • Installing and setup including private test net
    • Getting & putting data
    • Manifests
    • Associating with hash in blockchain.
    • Emulating mutable data structures (list, tree) with immutable ones
  • Hello Wisper

Backend Ethereum.

So there tends to be a lot of emphasis on HTML Dapps and I think other things like agents/daemons which watch the blockchain are much less well documented

  • Building a daemon which interacts with the blockchain (node.js / python / java. Go native bindings)
    • Basic stats & transactions (e.g. build a basic explorer)
    • Interacting with contracts (e.g. build an oracle & contract watcher)
    • Swarm/ipfs/whisper integration

Mobile Ethereum

  • Tutorial on light client speaking to server
    • Securely exposing an endpoint
    • Light client
  • Tutorial on import Geth
    • Hello ethereum on android
    • Hello ethereum on iphone

Design for security

  • Testing & auditing best practices
  • Solidity best practices
  • Best practices for systems of contracts which can be upgraded
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  • Great Outline!. Thanks for the ideas. That would help a lot of people.
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Feb 10, 2017 at 19:02
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We’re launching a technical Ethereum community blog – the Ethereum Blog Overflow

You should know that Stack Exchange is no longer hosting blogs on an internal platform. If you wish to start a blog, you will need to find another platform to host it.

We're no longer starting new individual site Community Blogs - here's why

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    Noted. Thanks. May be advisable to take that page down if it's misleading.
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Feb 10, 2017 at 22:52
  • Robert, I was suspecting that already, does that also mean the blog-software and site-integration isn't available either?
    – q9f
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 10:03
  • @5chdn that is correct.
    – Robert Cartaino
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 12:08
  • 2
    Just published, the final "death" of Blog Overflow: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/291741/…
    – eth Mod
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 18:51
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A suggestion: Dealing with the current stack that is working, or attempting to stay up to date with the bleeding edge implementation. This space moves fast, and a recommendation or personal experience with how more seasoned developers handle it.

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  • Create idea. Thanks Cory!
    – Rob Hitchens
    Commented Feb 10, 2017 at 19:00
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Another candidate. Reference variables. See here: http://vessenes.com/solidity-frustrations-references-and-mapping/ and Referring to a struct within an array. Incorrect understanding of reference variables could be a disaster. Easy to walk into a trap without even knowing about it.

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Another candidate. Alternative architectures - servers with Ethereum nodes, clients with nodes and light clients, fully and partially distributed options. Questions that rhyme with this theme seem to come up frequently. Example today: Typical architecture of a Dapp with a browser client

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