After an almost a 18 year background of PHP/Laravel development. Having been living the sweet life of MVC (Model-View-Controller) web development, happily juggling models, views, and controllers. Then, one day, you hear whispers of blockchain and smart contracts. Next thing you know, you’re staring at a Solidity file, asking yourself, “What fresh hell is this?” Fear not, dear developer! Here’s an infused guide to help you transition from MVC to Solidity and survive the experience.
In MVC, the controller is the boss, delegating tasks like a middle manager. In Solidity, there are no middle managers. It’s just your smart contract: a relentless, micromanaging dictator that must handle everything.
MVC: Controller - "I'll handle the routing, validation, and database calls. No big deal."
Solidity: Smart Contract - "I am the routing. I am the validation. There can only be ONE.!"
Get ready to write functions that rule over every transaction, with no one else to pick up the slack.
Ah, your beloved models. So neat, so organized, so object-oriented. In Solidity, data structures are… minimalist.
MVC: “Let’s define a User model with methods like fullName() and validations!”
Solidity: “Here’s a struct User { string name; uint age; }. Don’t ask for methods; I’m a contract, not an ORM.”
Also, meet mapping. It’s like a dictionary, but with trust issues—everything in Solidity is immutable once deployed. You can store data, but you cannot change the map itself. So you need to take your testing a way bit more seriously now.
In MVC, your views are all about rendering HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with flair. In Solidity, your “view” is… a blockchain explorer?
MVC: “Let’s make this UI sparkle!”
Solidity: “Here’s a hexadecimal transaction hash. Good luck interpreting it!”
If you’re lucky, you’ll get tools like Web3.js to help bridge the gap, but get comfortable writing backend-heavy code and relying on DApps to make your work look good.
Deploying an MVC app is a breeze. You make changes, redeploy, rinse, repeat. In Solidity, your contracts are like tattoos: permanent and usually regrettable if rushed and not tested.
MVC: “Oops, I pushed a typo to production. Let’s fix it and redeploy.”
Solidity: “Oops, I pushed a typo to production. Time to fork the blockchain and rewrite history.”
Pro tip: Triple-check everything. A deployed contract is immutable, so your bugs become eternal truths of the universe.
Testing in MVC is straightforward. Spin up a local server, write some unit tests, and you’re good to go. Testing in Solidity? Oh Jesus.
MVC: “Run the tests locally. If it fails, debug!”
Solidity: “Run tests on a local blockchain simulator, burn fake ETH for gas, and pray it behaves like the mainnet.”
And don’t forget gas optimization—your code could function perfectly but cost users an arm and a leg in transaction fees. Though I have been advised to stop "complaining about gas fees because of account abstraction", which I cover in this post.
In MVC, security is important. In Solidity, security is EVERYTHING. Forgetting to handle a reentrancy attack can cost millions, and hackers are lurking, ready to exploit even a single misplaced semicolon.
MVC: “Oops, I forgot to hash passwords.”
Solidity: “Oops, I forgot to check for overflows. Someone just drained the entire contract. do we have another loose 1M Kes lying around?”
Get ready to memorize phrases like "reentrancy guard," "integer underflow," and "self-destruct," because every line of code is a potential Achilles’ heel.
Deploying an MVC app? SSH into your server, run some commands, and voilà. Deploying a Solidity contract? Hope you’ve got some crypto in your wallet, because deploying costs gas.
MVC: “Deploy to AWS. Done.”
Solidity: “Deploy to Ethereum. There goes my grocery budget for the month.”
And remember, once deployed, your contract is live for everyone to scrutinize. Good luck explaining to Twitter why your “SecureToken” contract lost 1,000 ETH.
Transitioning from MVC to Solidity is like moving from a well-organized office to a Mad Max wasteland where your code could explode at any moment. But it’s also exciting, lucrative, and packed with possibilities.
So, dust off your cryptography books, brush up on Ethereum standards, pick a chain with community support and good documentation and get ready to trade your MVC comforts for the wild, decentralized frontier of Solidity. And if all else fails, just remember: at least you’re not still writing PHP.
In the end, transitioning to Solidity is like dating the blockchain—commitment is forever, and one wrong move can cost you everything! Apologies just don't cut it, be better.
Fabian Owuor
