What are the differences between Vyper and Solidity?

Hello! That's an excellent question, and it's a common point of confusion for many people just starting with smart contract development. I'll try to explain it in simple terms.

You can imagine Solidity and Vyper as two factories with different car-building philosophies.

• Solidity: Like an experienced F1 race car modification shop that aims for ultimate performance.
• Vyper: Like a Volvo car factory that prioritizes safety above all else.

Let's take a closer look at the differences between these two "factories."

Solidity: The Powerful "Manual Race Car"

Solidity is the "big brother" in the Ethereum world and currently the most dominant smart contract language. Its design goal is to be "powerful and capable of anything."

• Feature 1: Feature-rich and highly flexible. It provides developers with many advanced tools and "syntax sugar" (convenient shortcuts that make your code more pleasant to write), such as inheritance (where one contract can "inherit" the functions of another) and modifiers (which can add a "decoration" to a function, easily enabling permission checks, etc.). This is like a race car with various buttons, paddles, and a KERS system, allowing top drivers to achieve the fastest lap times.

• Feature 2: High freedom also means high risk. Precisely because it's so powerful and flexible, if you're a novice "driver," it's easy to "crash" due to improper operation. Many famous smart contract hacks in history occurred because developers accidentally misused some of Solidity's advanced features, leaving security vulnerabilities.

In simple terms, Solidity is like a manual, high-horsepower sports car. Experts can drive it at lightning speed, but beginners can easily stall or even crash.

Vyper: The Safety-First "Modern Volvo"

Vyper appeared later, and its birth goal was very clear: to solve the "crashing" problems that Solidity often leads to. Its core philosophy is "safety, simplicity, and readability."

• Feature 1: Embraces minimalism, cuts out dangerous features. The Vyper team reviewed various features in Solidity and made a decision: "We don't want any features that might lead to security issues or make the code complex and difficult to understand!"

  • No modifiers: Want to perform permission checks? Write them out explicitly at the beginning of the function; no "shortcuts" allowed.
  • No inheritance: Want to reuse code? Use composition instead; don't create complex "inheritance relationships."
  • Strict type checking: Numbers are numbers, addresses are addresses. Want to mix them? No way.
  • ...and so on.

  This is like Volvo building cars; for safety, it might sacrifice some extreme handling, but it ensures your and your family's safety. Vyper enforces safer, clearer code by doing "subtraction."

• Feature 2: Extremely high readability. Vyper's code looks very similar to Python, and its goal is for even a non-programmer to read your code and roughly guess its meaning. This is crucial because, in the blockchain world, code is law. A clear and easy-to-understand "legal document" makes it easier for everyone to audit and trust it.

In simple terms, Vyper is like an automatic Volvo, fully equipped with airbags and active braking systems. It might not let you perform flashy drifts, but it will reliably get you to your destination safely.

A Direct Comparison Table

In Summary, How Should I Choose?

• If you are a beginner: Starting with Solidity is still the mainstream choice. This is because its community is the largest, and you'll find the most tutorials and help. Once you've mastered Solidity, learning Vyper will feel much easier.

• If you are developing a project:

  • If your project logic is highly complex, requires many advanced programming techniques, and your team has top-tier security auditors, then Solidity remains the primary choice.
  • If your project's core is "asset security"—for example, building a vault where the logic is relatively simple but not a single penny can be lost—then Vyper is a highly recommended option. Using it to write contracts is like adding a natural "safety lock" to your code.

Overall, they are not a matter of one being good and the other bad; rather, they are tools born from different design philosophies, suitable for different scenarios. Understanding their respective strengths and weaknesses allows you to choose the right tool at the right time.