I want to make friends with developers and learn how to program a blockchain. I don't want to just learn how to program smart contracts. I want to learn everything necessary to understand the most robust blockchain/distributed-ledger technologies.
Does anyone know a good book to pick up? I have a long history of web development/javascript. I've had a really hard time searching for this.
I need to learn because I have a unique idea I want to implement on a dead coin.
you don't need much knowledge to start your own coin it is extremely easy. there are a lot of good tutorials around, it generally only involves a little copy and pasting so why would you use a dead coin when you can just make your own one so easily? Just google it there are so many tutorials on youtube, i made one just for fun the other day but it was a token on the eth platform not a coin. Took me around 10minutes to make.
WoW!! Do you have links handy?
Forking a codebase and even running the coin may not be very difficult - but depending on the codebase adding new 'unique' features is going to be considerably harder.
Even though you probably wouldn't want to go with Python there is a great 'build a blockchain' tutorial.
https://hackernoon.com/learn-blockchains-by-building-one-117428612f46It is a fun tutorial and exposes you to many of the basic ideas.
It will also depend on the idea you have. Any chance you will share it for feedback? The last thing I want is to steal your idea (I got three great coin ideas myself just need to someday develop them). Just want to give some feedback and maybe point you in the right direction.