NEAR Developer Research: Validating the NEAR DevX Tech Stack – Round 2
DEVELOPERS
October 29, 2020
Update: We’ve quickly filled up the available sessions for this round of research, and will not be taking on any more participants. The post will remain on the blog for those interested in getting a peek at what we’re up to. For those interested in participating, check back for round 3!

After a successful first round of research diving into the developer experiences of AssemblyScript and Rust earlier this month, we’re back in action with ROUND 2. This is a compensated opportunity to contribute to the future success of NEAR and help shape the future of developer experience for the community.

Validating the NEAR DevX Tech Stack
The next big decision we welcome the community to participate in is how we will support AssemblyScript in addition to Rust as a WASM source. We want to test our assumptions about the value propositions of these languages with community developers in order to make an informed, evidence based decision on what we choose to support, and to what extent.

Round 1 of this initiative focused on reading and discussing a set of pre-written contracts.

For Round 2, we want to walk through setting up and deploying a simple contract with our developer participants in order to compare and contrast the experience between languages. If selected, participants who complete a session with us will be compensated with $50 of value in the form of a gift card or tokens depending on location.

If interested in participating, fill out this invite form to connect with our team. You do not have to have participated in Round 1 to participate in Round 2.

What you’ll do
It’s easy to join and we’re open to feedback from community members from around the world. After a quick survey and remote interview we’ll ask you to complete a few simple dev tasks and provide your feedback to the team.

Pre-interview Survey
New participants will be asked to complete a short pre-interview survey about their development experience to help us categorize feedback. 
Remote Interview (15 min)
At the start of the session, new participants will be interviewed about their development experience and their opinions about the tools that we’re testing. 
Remote Technical Exercises (35 – 60min)
Each participant will be asked to complete a series of short tasks focused on customizing a smart contract on NEAR, and to share their thoughts along the way.

Participants will be asked to:
Use create-near-app to generate new projects in Rust and AssemblyScript
Edit contract code to pass a set of pre-written unit tests
Build and deploy the contract to the NEAR Testnet
Verify that the contract works as expected and troubleshoot any issues
You’re a great fit if you fall into any of the following categories:
… you’re a developer with experience in Javascript / Typescript

… you’re a developer with experience in AssemblyScript

… you’re a developer with experience in Rust

… you’re a developer with experience in Solidity

… you’re interested in getting some hands-on time with some of the basic NEAR developer tooling.