There has been a gradual increase globally in the developers exploring with blockchain in the past few years — with some creating a new protocol while others creating an update on existing protocols via forks and still others creating DApps on the existing blockchain platforms which they either find suitable for their use case or resources for which online and offline are readily available.

From being an interested developer to an actual blockchain developer, a few helpful pointers being sought out by developers are as follows:

1. An introduction: Whether you are a beginner or an expert, if one wants to explore something new, you need an introduction that draws you in to explore. Blockchain has been a buzzword (often due to bitcoin/crypto prices) that has made many developers explore it whereas others can be reeled in with success stories of blockchain based projects.
2. Global community & local network: Once hooked in, a developer looks out for like minded people — both in the local and global community, to seek out support (in the form of colleagues or mentors) on moving forward in the learning and development journey.
3. Non-technical and technical documentations: To have a strong development foundation, developers seek documentation (both technical and non-technical) which helps them design and build solutions/applications.
4. Tutorials: Documentations alone are not enough for the entire developer group to understand how to build products. Video tutorials or live interactive workshop sessions are something very much sought after.
5. Incentivization: Learning new things is an incentive in itself, but there has to be more. Say, a developer has learnt development and building solutions on a particular blockchain and wants to build an elaborate app. How can he take it forward? Team, funds and community to test your product are few important things that will be required to incentivize developers to continue the building process.

To motivate developers to join in, Algorand has introduced a developer-centric ‘Developer Portal’ which caters to all the requirements encompassing resources and tools for developers to explore development on the Algorand blockchain. Since it is an open source implementation, it is simple and fast for developers to build on the Algorand blockchain.

Developer Portal

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A description of each section

The Developer portal is so designed to cater to the needs of all developers, ranging from novice to experts, who want to try out development on blockchain. A quick run through each step:

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Article section: A knowledge base and a guide for users to get familiar with where and what to expect and explore to develop

Documentation: Technical documentation is available along with the code to build upon

Tutorials: Video tutorials are available posted by the development community not only by the Algorand development team but the developers’ sharing their knowledge further on how they are creating tokens and smart contracts on the Algorand platform

Existing solutions: Explore already developed solutions on the Algorand blockchain to analyze performance, journey or even suggest edits.

Forum: To connect with like minded individuals or mentors to make the learning and development journey easier and better.

Building and Beyond

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A step-by-step guide is available to set up the environment and explore features of Algorand on the Developer Portal. Not only does Algorand support developers to learn to build applications but also offers grants and rewards to developers to continue solution/application development via initiatives such as Incentive Award Program, DevAmbassador Program and the 250M ALGO Grant Program. There are incubators, venture capital funds and other strategic partners in the Algorand ecosystem which can be explored by developers to take their solution even further.

Insights

With hand holding during the early stages and providing a roadmap to continue development with the possibility of procuring grants or even funding directly via the foundation or affiliates in the ecosystem, developing on Algorand is sure an exciting option to learn, earn and plan your future at the same time — join in developers!

With the tutorials and documentation available, I will not only ask my team to explore Algorand but also try to create a token myself — even though it has been a while since I have coded. I will share a blog or a Vlog about my experience with that very soon.

Originally published by me at https://community.algorand.org/blog/resources-tools-and-incentives-for-developers-on-the-algorand-platform/