Changelog, Thursday 03 October 2024

Sprinting toward launches, and launching new sprints

A productive sprint, including working over the weekend. We have launched the first version of our development appraisal tool, Appraise. This meant we all spent the week testing, fixing bugs, adding to and crossing off items on our snag lists.

We switched off the MVP, running on our old infrastructure – and was, I think, the last piece of Tract expenditure still on my personal credit card – and adjusted the DNS settings to point to the new version. For posterity's sake, here's a screenshot of the old version:

We finished updating the data fetchers for Distribution Network Operator substations. DNOs are responsible for the distribution of electricity from the national transmission network to homes and businesses. Each one uses a subtly different API, which was annoying but predictable.

We fixed a memory leak, turning this:

Into this:

We designed a bunch of HTML emails and then discovered that HTML emails are stupid and we should just use plain text. So we then wrote a bunch of plain text emails.

Most importantly, we got it launched!

The launch of Appraise (and its sister product, Refer) also signals a shift in what these changelogs are for.

In last week's update, I wrote a little about 'working with the garage door open'; bearing ourselves to the world, showing our working. I don't want that to change. I still want us to communicate this clearly.

But we've got a product out now, and customers using it. So changelogs are going to no longer be published weekly. Instead, we'll publish them when we push out a new release.

And we'll supplement them with irregular (but hopefully frequent) technical blog posts. These will be more in-depth, more technical, and more reflective. They'll be about the problems we're solving, the decisions we're making, and the things we're learning.

Thanks for reading along so far.