Learn Native Rust or Anchor?

Question

I'm getting into creating Program on the Solana ecosystem, but as a beginner do i need to start with Rust or Anchor to write my Programs?

Answer 1

Start with Anchor because it's easier for beginners, provides helpful tools, and simplifies writing Solana programs. It also helps you learn Rust as you go.

Learn more about Anchor Anchor and also you might want to look this up as they have have tutorials on build with Anchor Sol Dev

Answer 2

If you are unfamiliar with Rust, I would highly recommend you start with that before venturing into the ecosystem if you want to build programs(smart contracts).

Anchor is an opinionated framework built on top of Rust that makes the development of Solana easier by removing very repetitive tasks like signer/address checks using macros. If you are familiar with Rust already, try out Anchor.

Should you need that extra tiny bit of control over your programs, for examples with how serialization and IDL generation is done then go with native Rust.

Check out examples here

• various solana programs (Rust + Anchor) https://solana.com/docs/programs/examples

• tutorials on the online playground - https://beta.solpg.io/tutorials