Oh yes, of course, that’s fundamental. Silly me. Thanks for your answers. I’d recommend being over-explicit for early versions of the software, something like “Global chain is currently %d blocks long”.
I guess the key problem right now is that once you generate coins, there’s nobody to test it with, even for dummy transactions. Is there a plan for a mailing list or some kind of trivial marketplace to give people something to do with their newly minted bitcoins?