Questions about Dfinity

Developers Getting Started
1

Hi,
I’m (obviously) completely new to all of this, I just saw this, it LOOKED damn cool, so I surfed on in and… I have some QUESTIONS! :slight_smile: :

  1. Can one write websites which have backends written in Javascript (ie. node.js) in this thing?

  2. Can any person, including a guy at home become a hoster of this thing? Is it possible to do that on a Dynamic IP?

  3. Can I be a hoster from Calcutta, India? ie. can I get paid in Rupees using this thing (with your “token”, whatever that is?)

  4. Is it possible to harness the GPU on the server side using this thing? ie. for remote game streaming services and suchlike?

Ok, that’s all to start with.
Thanks :slight_smile:

2

Hi, - no one knows? :slight_smile: In particular, I’d really like to know about Javascript!

3

Hi groovee, Sorry for the delay answering some of your questions, lots going on!

Re the Javascript, it’d be worth you taking a look at Motoko for your backend code, it’s designed specifically for the Internet Computer and has features to help you build apps very easily. It also has strong type checking which will help you as you build. If you know Javascript already then Motoko should feel reasonably familiar, you should be able to pick it up quickly. I’d try the quick start here and see how you get on: https://sdk.dfinity.org/docs/quickstart/quickstart.html

There are some simple tutorials in here too: https://sdk.dfinity.org/docs/developers-guide/tutorials-intro.html . Your Javascript skills will actually come in handy for the frontend, so they’re certainly not wasted!

Re the node hosting, this is a similar situation to your smartphone question and currently the machines hosting nodes are in dedicated datacenters, there could be reasonable scope for smaller professional setups if they meet the hardware requirements but it wouldn’t be an at home/dynamic IP situation: https://forum.dfinity.org/t/harnessing-smartphones-to-host-dfinity/1284/4

Re GPUs, nodes aren’t currently using the GPU but this is being looked at.

It’d certainly be worth giving the Motoko tutorials a try, it would be good to know how you get on and if there are any particular areas you need help with. It’s all designed to be very approachable. Let us know what you think…

1 Like
4

Umm… after that GPT-3 thing, i.e. you can now, or will soon be able to, program a computer in ENGLISH,… what’s the point of learning yet another language?
Also, the low-code/no-code tools (which will probably be on the horizon soon) are Another reason not to, right?
Isn’t the whole thing (the whole WORLD of web dev) basically finished?? That’s kind of how it’s looking, to me…

5

Btw, will there soon be paper books on Motoko?