So @thecrazygm and I have been working together for a good long while now, but just this year we set out to achieve our destiny with the @mithrildestiny and @team.mithril. We need these tools of course, but we also created @open.mithril to make sure that everything we do get done, ends up being open and available for others to work on and off of in the future. We have been quite productive, and have successfully reorganized our list of (free!) tools, which was headed off the page.
And while we have done recordings before - noteably our AMA about the Open.Mithril Development Framework DHF proposal - generally I do the talking and GM does the hidden magic. But, he is actually a really interesting guy and fun to listen to, so when @buttcoins asked me about it, we set it up and made it happen, HIVE Thrive featuring @thecrazygm (and @ecoinstant).
In this episode we talk about a little bit of everything - from How we build software fast and many of the pitfalls that make it so rare to see people or groups actually build software quickly.
It takes some experience to manage different types of things, someone familiar with architecture might be able to identify with the principles, but still get caught out in practice. To me the basic is - foundation first, and the foundation for any development is obviously going to be "the back end".
Nowadays we have a lot of "no back end" or front-end only app building, many people even build front end only apps and host them on free vercel hosting platform. This is good, this is fine, this is even fun - but of course this is a limited way of doing development and puts a lot of the onus on the user's device - which can sometimes lead to a bad experience!
Talking about building
We took questions from the audience as well, it seems like there are a lot of people casually interested in "how building things work" - we fielded what was for me a fascinating question about contracts and deliverables; all very normal things in "the real world". Of course, I have almost never worked this way - this is open source after all, there is no money. What contract? Even the people who do get DHF money often don't report or "contract" to do anything specific.
And the funny thing is, all of these ideas about reporting would and do create "a lot more work". For those of us not receiving funding, it would make doing what we do A LOT more expensive and time consuming. That doesn't mean it's not useful, especially for teams struggling with long development times - organizing the work really well first is one of the ways to overcome some of the challenges faced by the iceberg of development.
Who's the boss?
If you get DHF funding, its my opinion that you 'serve' the stakeholders of HIVE. Its up to the stakeholders of HIVE to figure out how to work together to "demand" certain deliverables, and also work together to decide what they are trying to demand from the teams they are paying.
But if you don't get funding - you "don't"! In the end, its up to each development team to set the priorities, workflow and development style that best works for them, and their goals. We have enough experience now that we have, since the start of this year, settled into a very comfortable full-time flow, and are still having fun doing "it", even if I am not always sure how to explain what "it" is precisely or exactly.
We are here, and we mostly have fun doing what we are doing everyday. If it can be helpful to other people - that is such a bonus. A growing cadre of users have noticed us, comment on us, support us and vote us - and that is more priceless than "MONEY", its friendship, philosophy, connection and freedom - in the real world. "Is it worth money?" - its worth much more than that. And I appreciate all of you - very much. If you want to hear a casual conversation with @thecrazygm and myself about these issues - I encourage you to click the youtube link and put in your headphones.