Any alternative to not have to deal with PyTeal?

You may enjoy using Reach — https://docs.reach.sh/ — which is a high-level language that targets Algorand.

Fast mode for development testing

Thanks Robert. We create a network using a template just like that. The main reason we make one is so that we can have a custom faucet for automating disbursing funds for testing. I’ll check out algob

Communication with TEAL contracts

Alice and Bob are using Algorand to communicate with each other, where a TEAL contract is enforcing that they are communicating according to the rules.
So, after Alice sends her transaction, Bob needs to see it on the chain before he can make his transaction, and so on for the rest of the protocol.

Transaction timing

Starting the container and sending the first transaction takes about 8 seconds for me.
Here’s a transcript of a run that took 72 seconds for me that is annotated with timestamps: https://gist.github.com/jeapostrophe/40a5d25a26abfe554519a2003b131800
Lines 1-7 show that it takes 8 seconds to make an...

Running a pure development node in Ethereum

Ethereum’s geth has options for running a pure development, contract testing node (the -dev and -dev.period 0 options). This makes it so that the node does nothing until you send it a transaction, when it immediately handles the transaction, then sits waiting again.
I have a very simple example...

ASC1/TEAL and Atomic Transfers

Thank you, this was very helpful!
I am trying to simulate something like how Ethereum allows a contract to originate multiple transfers with an ASC1 contract.
I believe I can do this by having my ASC1 contract (written in TEAL) approve an atomic transaction group, with, for example, two transactions, T1 and T2, which would be prepa...