Hi guys,
I have a general question. Why was the Ethereum blockchain writen in a completely new language, Solidity ?
Wouldn’t it has been much easier to write it in Python ? Or is Python too limited as a programming language and not functional when it comes to Proof of Work, building dapps, etc ?
Ethereum is actually implemented in Golang and C++, geth and parity respectively. The Ethereum Virtual Machine parses Solidity, kind of a scripting language, that is heavily based on JavaScript. As far as I understand this was because so many people know Javascript.
However, as I hope you’ll be delighted to know, Vitalik has been developing a new language for the Ethereum Virtual Machine called Vyper that is modeled after Python.
There is a full node client implemented in python (https://github.com/ethereum/pyethereum). The Ethereum blockchain is just a protocol which has a set of consensus rules. The clients can be implemented in any programming language as long as they follow the rules.