Almost Likable
Progress Update
Last week I talked about the “page like” functionality I intend to add to this blog and this week I’d like to follow on and provide an update on the progress of this work.
My intern Al recently downloaded the website source code from GitHub to help me with the work. I mentioned that I wanted to continue updating the blog while the new “page like” feature was under development. Al asked if he should create a new branch in the repo and was somewhat surprised when I said that branching was not an option and that we would be using the “feature toggle” approach instead.
Feature Toggle Architecture
Feature toggle architecture supports release on demand and enables multiple teams to work on a single source branch to implement different functionality in parallel. Toggle parameters determine what functionality is or isn’t enabled for the single build.
This approach also avoids the need for separate feature-specific builds and deployments and avoids merging of completed features back into the “main” branch of old. Instead we just have the single “master” branch, a live configuration and various configurations for testing.
It takes a little effort and thinking to embrace the feature toggle approach but the extra effort is worth it.
At time of writing, much of the front-end HTML and JavaScript are in place to display like totals, like buttons, increment a page like count, thank someone for liking a page and the various hook ups to the back-end AWS Lambda API functions - albeit all of this is switched off so you won’t see any of it. What is not in place is all of the back-end database stuff that powers the front-end, which is still being developed.
At The speed Of Learning
Blog site development is occurring at the speed of learning. As we prototype the new functionality (sometimes on a trial and error basis) and finally get it hooked up, we design the functionality so that it can be released switched off. This allows us to leave gaps in the code that we’ll complete later as we discover and learn how to do it properly and get time to finish it.
In the mean time, the weekly blog post and any new learning trick posts can still go ahead unhindered and we can continue to be flexible on when the new “page like” functionality is released.
Designing For Testability
AWS API Gateway functionality allows for different stages of deployment (test, live etc.) and API versioning. Part of the learning exercise is to understand exactly how this works so it can be incorporated into the solution. This is part of the intentional “learning by doing” approach but ends up being backed by some studying if things aren’t obvious and by some SME oversight where security concerns need validating.
We also want to test the user experience (both in happy-flow and unhappy-flow scenarios) and ensure things fail gracefully so users still have a good experience. As Al knows, good programmers test their error handling too.
Monitoring And Alerting
No solution is complete without monitoring and alerting. This is another area where learning is required to find out how we log errors and get notified about them. It might be nice to know whenever someone likes a page too – perhaps AWS SNS could help with that.
Visible Progress
Page like functionality is making progress albeit not actually visible to end users yet. The progress is proof of learning and doing. It doesn’t matter if progress is made in great strides or small steps, ultimately progress is progress!
Continuous progress is the secret to successful learning. Those who make time to make things happen on their learning journey are ultimately the ones who succeed.
Thank you for liking this page.
Tim Simpson
16th August, 2019
#LifeAtCapgemini