July 6, 2015 at 10:53What to choose - Cavitation, Robotism or Sociality?
Today I want to talk about the future of AllMyChanges.com . For those who hear about it for the first time, I’ll explain this is such a service for subscribing to new versions of libraries, software and anything else that has a version number and its description. More details can be found in previous articles .
This service has been around for quite some time, but since it develops only thanks to the persistence of the founder and without any external infusions, then for successful growth it is necessary to focus on really important things.
I see at least three areas of development of the service and I propose to discuss them in detail, as well as vote on which of the areas to deal with in the first place. Thus, today you get a unique chance to influence the development of this startup, to help crystallize the main ideas and determine the direction of development.
So, as already mentioned, I see three areas of development. Let's look at the first.
Many users tell me, and not without reason, that the service could be more sympathetic, or more comfortable. At the same time, as a rule, they nod towards competitors, such as Sibbel , they advise taking Bootstrap and the like.
No one, however, goes down to the details and such comments are usually unconstructive, and therefore end in nothing. I perfectly understand that the service lacks the glamor that is now fashionable. But on the other hand, it performs its functions perfectly - it parses changelogs and sends out notifications of new releases. Undoubtedly, much can be done better in terms of UI and UX. But until a properly motivated interface developer joins the project, this is unlikely to happen.
The interface design for me, first of all, does not mean glamorous gloss, but the elaboration of the mechanisms of user interaction with the service. Improvements in this place may not even make the service more beautiful, but at the same time it will become more convenient, it will be better to tell people about its capabilities and, thus, will be more valuable to them.
In short, the direction should be renamed to "Understandability", and deal no longer with graphic design, but with the convenience of using interfaces.
Robot hereinafter means a certain degree of automation that facilitates the use of the service and lowers the threshold of entry. One of the main problems now is that AllMyChanges offers to subscribe to libraries and software, and you have to do this manually. But it would be nice if robots did it for us, right? Of course, there are APIs and a number of utilities for automating the process, but only a few use them. If you integrate automation into the service itself, this functionality will be more convenient. However, in many ways, the manual addition of libraries to the service database is due to the fact that it is not always possible to automatically determine the place where the sources are. And information about the repository is simply necessary in order to find and parse ChangeLog.
For this reason, none of the so-called "competitors", neither VersionEye nor Gemnasium , provide information about the changes. All they do is keep track of new versions on PyPi, Ruby Gems, and similar public package repositories.
To retrieve more information, you need to know where to retrieve it. And often only a person can provide this information. Hence all the difficulties.
But I'm sure you can do better.
Another feature that everyone asks, also related to adding packages, is parsing files like requirements.txt, Gemfile.lock and the like. However, this is not such a simple matter as it seems. All files with dependencies have their own format; everyone needs to expand the list of dependencies differently. And most importantly - VersionEye and Gemnasium already do all this quite well. What they do not do is not provide information on what changes the dependency update brings.
So why, instead of repeating the functionality already implemented by other services, do not start to be friends with them and derive a synergistic effect from this friendship? They are good at parsing and keeping track of dependencies, AllMyChangesparse release notes, so the combination of tools will give you a complete picture of what is happening in a particular project.
Therefore, "robotics" means the friendship between AllMyChanges and other services, such as Gemnasium, VersionEye, GitHub, when they provide information about the modules and packages used in your projects.
And there are many possible implementation options, I suggest discussing them in the comments.
The next, and rather obvious direction, where you can develop is the addition of a social component. Now everything goes to social networks. Even GitHub has long been no longer just hosting for Git repositories, but a social network where they communicate in code comments, subscribe to each other and like different projects. I have been nurturing this idea for a long time. The simplest, probably, is to screw Disqus comments on each version to enable users to leave notes for other users. But at the same time, this is the most limited option, as it leaves aside many chips that can be implemented to work together on release laptops.
For example, you can enable manual markup of new versions, such as critical, backward incompatible; comments on a specific phrase; maybe something else.
And of course, we need user profiles with avatars, likes, followings and that’s all.
While I do not have a clear understanding of how it should or can work. So I really hope that you now run into the comments and share your thoughts.
I have listed three possible directions for developing a service for tracking release notes:
It may well be that I missed something important. Feel free to leave comments, your opinion can affect the fate of the service.
I will not yet share my thoughts on the priorities of the above areas, and now I suggest you vote for one of them, which seems to you the most important. It is important that the service begins to bring real benefits to you personally.
Thanks in advance for all your comments and voices.
This service has been around for quite some time, but since it develops only thanks to the persistence of the founder and without any external infusions, then for successful growth it is necessary to focus on really important things.
I see at least three areas of development of the service and I propose to discuss them in detail, as well as vote on which of the areas to deal with in the first place. Thus, today you get a unique chance to influence the development of this startup, to help crystallize the main ideas and determine the direction of development.
So, as already mentioned, I see three areas of development. Let's look at the first.
Cavaliness
Many users tell me, and not without reason, that the service could be more sympathetic, or more comfortable. At the same time, as a rule, they nod towards competitors, such as Sibbel , they advise taking Bootstrap and the like.
No one, however, goes down to the details and such comments are usually unconstructive, and therefore end in nothing. I perfectly understand that the service lacks the glamor that is now fashionable. But on the other hand, it performs its functions perfectly - it parses changelogs and sends out notifications of new releases. Undoubtedly, much can be done better in terms of UI and UX. But until a properly motivated interface developer joins the project, this is unlikely to happen.
The interface design for me, first of all, does not mean glamorous gloss, but the elaboration of the mechanisms of user interaction with the service. Improvements in this place may not even make the service more beautiful, but at the same time it will become more convenient, it will be better to tell people about its capabilities and, thus, will be more valuable to them.
In short, the direction should be renamed to "Understandability", and deal no longer with graphic design, but with the convenience of using interfaces.
Roboticness
Robot hereinafter means a certain degree of automation that facilitates the use of the service and lowers the threshold of entry. One of the main problems now is that AllMyChanges offers to subscribe to libraries and software, and you have to do this manually. But it would be nice if robots did it for us, right? Of course, there are APIs and a number of utilities for automating the process, but only a few use them. If you integrate automation into the service itself, this functionality will be more convenient. However, in many ways, the manual addition of libraries to the service database is due to the fact that it is not always possible to automatically determine the place where the sources are. And information about the repository is simply necessary in order to find and parse ChangeLog.
For this reason, none of the so-called "competitors", neither VersionEye nor Gemnasium , provide information about the changes. All they do is keep track of new versions on PyPi, Ruby Gems, and similar public package repositories.
To retrieve more information, you need to know where to retrieve it. And often only a person can provide this information. Hence all the difficulties.
But I'm sure you can do better.
Another feature that everyone asks, also related to adding packages, is parsing files like requirements.txt, Gemfile.lock and the like. However, this is not such a simple matter as it seems. All files with dependencies have their own format; everyone needs to expand the list of dependencies differently. And most importantly - VersionEye and Gemnasium already do all this quite well. What they do not do is not provide information on what changes the dependency update brings.
So why, instead of repeating the functionality already implemented by other services, do not start to be friends with them and derive a synergistic effect from this friendship? They are good at parsing and keeping track of dependencies, AllMyChangesparse release notes, so the combination of tools will give you a complete picture of what is happening in a particular project.
Therefore, "robotics" means the friendship between AllMyChanges and other services, such as Gemnasium, VersionEye, GitHub, when they provide information about the modules and packages used in your projects.
And there are many possible implementation options, I suggest discussing them in the comments.
Sociality
The next, and rather obvious direction, where you can develop is the addition of a social component. Now everything goes to social networks. Even GitHub has long been no longer just hosting for Git repositories, but a social network where they communicate in code comments, subscribe to each other and like different projects. I have been nurturing this idea for a long time. The simplest, probably, is to screw Disqus comments on each version to enable users to leave notes for other users. But at the same time, this is the most limited option, as it leaves aside many chips that can be implemented to work together on release laptops.
For example, you can enable manual markup of new versions, such as critical, backward incompatible; comments on a specific phrase; maybe something else.
And of course, we need user profiles with avatars, likes, followings and that’s all.
While I do not have a clear understanding of how it should or can work. So I really hope that you now run into the comments and share your thoughts.
Total
I have listed three possible directions for developing a service for tracking release notes:
- user-friendly interface;
- Automation and integration with other services such as VersionEye;
- development of the social component.
It may well be that I missed something important. Feel free to leave comments, your opinion can affect the fate of the service.
I will not yet share my thoughts on the priorities of the above areas, and now I suggest you vote for one of them, which seems to you the most important. It is important that the service begins to bring real benefits to you personally.
Thanks in advance for all your comments and voices.
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What to develop AllMyChanges.com?
- 70.4% UI Understanding 43
- 60.6% automation and integration with other services such as VersionEye 37
- 14.7% social component, likes profiles and that's it 9
