Ethereum updates its Solidity programming language for more versatility

The new version of Ethereum’s new native programming language, Solidity, has seen the light of day. This time it brings with it minor improvements at the language level, however, it integrates a new feature that will allow programming from any development environment (IDE).

The new version was published on December 20 on the official Solidity blog, where the list of changes and fixed bugs is exposed with which this new version of the Ethereum programming language will have.

The main change is to allow adding Solidity to different IDEs, such as Qt Creator or VIM. The integration facilitates that, when programming in the IDE on Solidity, it is possible to use development tools such as: compilers, documentation and even autocompleted. Those interested can enter the official blog to know the particular installation according to the IDE to be used.

Interestingly, as the release note highlights, Microsoft’s VS Code, one of the most widely used IDEs today, does not have LSP support for Solidity syntax autocompletion. This is waiting for these features to be added shortly.

Likewise, those who wish to use this new tool known as the Language Server Protocol, or LSP for its acronym in English, must download the native binaries of the language from the GitHub official. For those who use Solidity instance via JavaScript NPM, LSP is not yet available.

Language level improvements

In addition to improvements at the level of compatibility with programming environments, the Solidity developers have also brought a small improvement, which optimizes the use of the compiler, known as abi.encodeCall. This allows a faster verification of the data, contrary to the one used previously, abi.encodeWithSelector.

While this can be considered a minimal improvement, as only a small optimization is discussed in the compiler, computational costs must be taken into account. When Ethereum runs on a virtual machine distributed throughout the blockchain, known as EVM (Ethereum virtual machine), that a code presents bad optimizations, can mean operating costs that translate into increases on commissions.