I have a few technical projects that I’m working on, but they are moving very slowly. Little’s Law has taken effect, where working on multiple things at once makes everything progress at a glacial pace. Let’s talk about the things I’m doing and maybe write out some progress. I might also cover some other topics, like how I’m using current AI techniques to get better at leveraging technology.
One project is called Team Beat. It’s software that organizes a retrospective into phases: a discovery phase where people can submit cards to a board, a voting phase where participants vote on the most important cards, and a discussion phase to talk about those cards. The software takes all the notes from the retrospective and puts them into a markdown document that you can save. The tool works well, and a couple of teams at work are using it. However, there are issues with it. The real-time board submissions are powered by WebSockets written in Go, which connects to the database storing all this information. One problem is that although Go performs well, configuration exists in the front end that really should be part of the back end. This disconnection of config makes it hard to filter down to specific user details in some situations. For example, every action on a board is broadcast on a single channel delivered to all users, requiring them all to fetch new information from the API instead of receiving simple updates.