I have been interested in the shared/distributed ledger technology (a.k.a. block chain, a.k.a. the magic behind cryptocurrencies) for more than a year already but recently I had finally put real time and effort into it. And since I believe that the best way to understand something is to get your hands dirty, that is what I have done, after I got a grasp of the core principles (or that is what I thought back then), I decided to code my own shared ledger simulator. Initially, I also considered to look into the main existing code bases (e.g., the source code of the main/official Bitcoin client/miner or Ethereum's) since they are open source, but seeing code like this   put me off... That file is 3229 lines big!!! Plus it is written in C++. Do not get me wrong, I truly believe Satoshi Nakamoto (i.e., whoever hides behind that name) is a genius and also a great software developer, but he/she/they for sure did not have readability as their main priority. I also noticed that some