ganache-cli-archive

I've been working in the Ethereum space for a year and a half, so I know my perspective is warped, but I really don't think the learning curve is that bad any more. Solidity isn't a very complicated language and has decent documentation[0], and Truffle[1] and TestRPC[2] can get you writing automated tests against a simulated blockchain more or less instantly. It's still relatively early days, and there is a lot more work to do in making this stuff as friendly as possible, but progress has been pretty rapid. [0] http://solidity.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [1] https://github.com/ConsenSys/truffle [2] https://github.com/ethereumjs/testrpc

(Readers who have similar developer questions should check out the Ethereum Stack Exchange. It's really useful! https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/) Blockchains have to produce new blocks regularly to be useful. Think of the gas limit like the amount of time you have to render a new frame in graphics applications. If you have unbounded computation in a time-dependent system that anyone can submit instructions to, you're gonna get some DoS attacks. > There is (last I checked), no way to know if your program will go over. Just trial and error It's easy to check: blockchains are deterministic state machines. You can simulate a transaction to see what would happen with the current state, and as long as the state of your contract isn't modified by another transaction in the meantime, you'll get the same results on the chain. > Last i checked,