Blockchains, the public ledgers that comprise the framework of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, have been proposed as platforms for almost all sorts of financial instruments during the past few years. Furthermore, the public ledger technology has also been recently appealing to innovators across other sectors too including social networking, online gaming, distributed computing and others. However, has the technology fully evolved to the level where there is a considerable market for blockchain developers?
I guess the answer is “yes”, based on my experience, observations and the visions of financiers, stock market analysts and blockchain angel investors. The demand for blockchain developers has been surging at an accelerating rate during the past couple of years. This can be evidenced by the growing number of financial institutions embracing the blockchain technology. Practically speaking, building a blockchain, making it fully operable, and integrating it with pre-existing systems is never a walk in the park. Some companies have specialized in helping various institutions build their own blockchains. In December, 2015, Microsoft launched a development platform, which they named “Blockchain as a Service” (BaaS), on the Azure cloud to help companies build their very own private blockchain based networks and applications.
Even with the existence of huge platforms like BaaS, the market is still starving for a large number of skilled blockchain developers who can meet the growing demand for blockchain based platforms and applications. Moreover, there is currently a limited set of development tools at the disposal of blockchain developers, which complicates the problem even more. As such, it has never been a better time to start a career in blockchain development.
Ok, I want to become a blockchain developer, where shall I start from?
If you decide to start learning blockchain programming, you will be faced with the problem of the scarcity of resources. A perfect place to start from, would be to delve into Hyperledger, which is a platform for open source blockchains that was launched by the Linux Foundation in 2015 to endorse the collaborative development of blockchains. Hyperledger has some subprojects that were built via Hyperledger’s blockchain platforms. You can learn a lot from Hyperledger; even examining the code of the projects can be extremely fruitful.
Try to engage in discussions with blockchain developers. Bitcoin.org has compiled an amazing list that includes all developers who contributed to bitcoin core and links to their GitHub pages.
I recommend this astonishing list of resources that includes books, tutorials and open source blockchain projects. Literally, it includes almost everything you need to start learning blockchain programming.
So, what are you waiting for? You now have all that you need to become a blockchain developer!
