The Solidity language
Solidity is a domain-specific language of choice for programming contracts in Ethereum. There are other languages that can be used, such as Serpent, Mutan, and LLL, but Solidity is the most popular. Its syntax is closer to both JavaScript and C.
Solidity has evolved into a mature language over the last few years and is quite easy to use, but it still has a long way to go before it can become advanced, standardized, and feature-rich, like other well-established languages such as Java, C, or C#. Nevertheless, this is the most widely used language currently available for programming contracts.
It is a statically typed language, which means that variable type checking in Solidity is carried out at compile time. Each variable, either state or local, must be specified with a type at compile time. This is beneficial in the sense that any validation and checking is completed at compile time and certain types of bugs, such as the interpretation of data types,...