I've been shilling Solana for too long and I often get asked the same questions about why/where/how to start.
Below is my best attempt at summarizing quality resources for new devs. In theory, this action-list has everything you need to go from wannabe who never coded Rust to proper Solana hacker.
Enjoy 🦀⚓🚀
Not convinced you should bother? Start here.
I find these 3rd party theses to be most compelling.
I tried to pick a mix of founders shilling their own chain / 3rd party opinions.
- Intro so solana on uncommon core
- Solana founders on upOnly
- Unchained - can Solana seize marketshare from Eth? [oct 2020]
- Unchained - could sol displace eth? [aug 2021 - almost a year later]
Aight you're excited and ready to jump in. Where do you start? You start with Rust (used for coding "programs" aka smart contracts on Solana.)
- Rust crash course [4h] - excellent, short and to the point intro.
- The official rust lang book [1-2d of intense reading] - will teach you syntax and language quirks.
- +++ don't be lazy and do the exercises for each chapter
- Zero2Prod [1-2 wks of study] - will take you from "I get the syntax" to "I get rust as a programming language and where it's strong/weak".
The juicy part.
- Read the "developing" section of the docs [2-3h] - you will get a lot of questions, but that's ok. Just write them down and you'll be surprised how quickly they get answered as you progress.
- Solana Bootcamp Chicago Jan 22 [8 videos] - Introduces the Solana programming / account model, PDAs, CPIs, runtime limitations, and a few demo programs. The videos are very concise and eloquent.
It's ok to be overwhelmed. Here's where you get help.
- Rust questions
- Rust community is one of the best I've seen in the dev space. My go to is asking #rust tagged questions on StackOverflow or going to dedicated rust forums if I want to have a bit more of a discussion.
- Get ready to be amazed! Questions are generally answered within 30min of being asked - that's a totally polar experience to your python/js questions on SO that get 1 reply in 3 days.
- There's also Rust discord, if you prefer chats to forums.
- Solana questions
- In general all the help is available in discord channels such as:
- First thing to do is always Ctrl-F the discord with any keywords you might have from your error. In general, I'd say 50% of the time someone already had that problem and you'll get an instant answer.
- If that fails, each protocol usually has some sort of
developer questions
channel. Be specific and to the point with your questions (no "hey this is my first post") and don't feel bad for re-asking ("still looking for answer to this [reply to own previous question]. Anyone might know?). Worst case CC one of the admins who you see frequenting in the chat.
If crypto as a whole moves at light speed, Solana's ecosystem basically warps time.
- Solana's official newsletter drops about once/mo
- Project serum does a weekly medium newsletter, which covers the entire space
- sol.wtf is a little side project I built for fun. It tracks top twitter posts related to Solana
- Podcasts: Solana's official pod, FTX's official pod, Solana Cove, The antidote (no new episodes, but good old ones)