...
Nick Szabo is a computer scientist known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency. Although Szabo has repeatedly denied it, people have speculated that he is the one behind Satoshi Nakamoto, the designer of Bitcoins. The phrase and concept of smart contracts was developed by him with the goal of bringing what he calls the "highly evolved" practices of contract law and practice to the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet.
...
Smart contracts are written using the Solidity language. A contract in the sense of Solidity is a collection of code (its functions) and data (its state) that resides at a specific address on the Ethereum blockchain. You will find a collection of very basic smart contracts on fivedogit github.
Decentralized applications
...