This article aims to help you setup your local system for smartcontract development on NEAR protocol. It includes guides on installing WSL for Windows users, and steps for installing the necessary programs and libraries.
NEAR is a simple, scalable and fast layer 1 blockchain protocol used for building decentralised applications. NEAR runs smartcontracts compiled to WebAssembly (wasm). Currently there are Rust and AssemblyScript (a dialect of Typescript) official SDKs.