When we started working on the first version of this course in September 2016, we knew that one of the main challenges would be to keep our content consistent and up-to-date, even as the technology and the tools keep evolving very quickly. 
So we deliberately designed all our content to be easier” to update, we scripted everything, we tried to anticipate changes, and we released the first version of the course in September 2017.
Since then, more than 6500 students joined us, leaving us more than 1000 reviews and asking more than 600 questions. Your feedback was overwhelmingly positive and constructive and it motivated us to do better.
So in November 2017, when the Truffle team announced the release of Truffle 4 and Ganache, we decided to take this opportunity to completely revamp the practical part of the course. You read that right: we didn’t want just a superficial update, we wanted to re-evaluate how those tools make for an integrated development environment for building smart contract and decentralized applications. And we also wanted to integrate all of your amazing feedback.
So without further ado, after 3 months of hard work spent in rewriting all of the practical sections (sections 5 to 7), validating them to make sure they run smoothly on all operating systems, injecting all the tips and tricks you missed to troubleshoot your issues, re-shooting all the videos, editing them to make them more readable, here comes the best update in the entire history of Udemy course updates (really, we checked ;-). Just kidding, but we’re quite proud of this. It took more time than we had anticipated because MetaMask, Truffle 4 and Ganache had quite a few undocumented issues that we had to find workarounds for, discussing with their developers and so on. But we are glad it’s finally here.
To celebrate this update, we created a special code to get the entire course for $9,99 (or the equivalent in your currency). Feel free to share this link with your friends and colleagues before the end of the month: the code won’t be valid after that.
Here are the main improvements in this update:
  • Full coverage of Truffle 4 and Ganache, with all their new features (and all the tips and tricks to work around remaining bugs)
  • We insisted even more on testing strategies and deployment to all the possible networks (in-memory, private node, public test nets and the main net)
  • We removed the dependency on Github for downloading source code: you can now download all the source code directly from the resources of each lecture
  • No more copy-pasting the code: we type everything live, which makes for somewhat longer videos but it easier to follow along
  • All the content is fully tested and adapted on all 3 major operating systems (MacOS, Windows and Linux). Even though most of the content is shot on a Mac, we explain the specificities of each platform when relevant, and some videos are even specific to each environment.
With this update, we hope we can continue to answer all of your questions within 12 hours, like we managed to do so far, even when 10000 more students join us.
Practically speaking, the new updated content for sections 5 to 7 has been added to the course and the old content will remain online for now, so that those that already started going through the old content don’t feel lost. But in a few weeks from now, we will unpublish the old content so that new students don’t have to go through it in order to get their Udemy 100% certificate.
And of course, if you notice any bug, missing link or resource, outdated content or mistake of any kind, please let us know, as the quality of this course is really important to us.
Last but not least, in order to improve referencing and to better reflect the content of the course, we decided to change its title to Become a Blockchain Developer with Ethereum and Solidity”.
All that being said, 5 months after the first publication of this course, the ChainSkills mission remains absolutely intact: to bring more people, and especially more developers into the incredibly promising and challenging environment of blockchain development, so that we can grow this technology together and make it implement its full potential.
This update is another step in this direction. Hopefully it will hold for long enough to give us some time to work on our next projects, which we are sure you will all be excited about.
In the meantime, don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, on our website and to join us on Slack so that we keep you in the loop.
Thanks a lot for your amazing support.
PS: Although you only see me, Sebastien, in the videos, Said is the amazing guy to thank for creating and writing all of the sample code developed in this course, as well as scripting the practical lessons. He’s the reason the lessons are so well-structured, progressive and incremental. He’s the guy who finds workaround and tips to all those issues with development tools. And yet he operates behind the scenes. So give him a big round of applause.
Sébastien Arbogast on EmailSébastien Arbogast on FacebookSébastien Arbogast on InstagramSébastien Arbogast on LinkedinSébastien Arbogast on Twitter
Sébastien Arbogast
Développeur passionné et indépendant, entrepreneur dans l’âme et apprenti visionnaire, je suis toujours à l’affût de ces technologies qui vont bouleverser le monde et nos sociétés. Consultant depuis plus de 12 ans, je me suis récemment lancé à la conquête de la blockchain, je donne des conférences et des formations sur le sujet (notamment en ligne sur Udemy). A côté de ça je suis curieux de plein de choses: la conquête spatiale, la moto, la musique électronique, les hippocampes albinos ambidextres… plein de choses.