The One-Woman Dev Team Diaries #203
A week coding away in France, a friend's wedding, and lamenting at how long everything takes in the world of software! 😩
Un Workation
I’ve just arrived home after a week in France! I spent last Tuesday to Friday staying in an aparthotel and doing several 2/3-hour focused work sprints. 😍
I decided to code solely on the redesign and this is what I got done:
Favorites MVP
Users can now add books to a Favorites collection and up to five will show up at random on their profile page.
This has been a feature people have been super excited about for years and they’re lucky to have it now as it comes as part of the profile page redesign. 🪄
It was a hit! 🪴
Reading Goal Pane
I think a series of before and after photos best demonstrate this update:
Most people love it:
You can’t keep everybody happy though:
User Reviews
The page heading and individual review pages next!
The focused work periods really hit home just how looooong everything takes. 😩
There were hardly any distractions or lapses of focus and I still didn’t do anywhere near as much as I wanted to last week. 🥲
Hey ho. Onwards. 💪🏾
Un Mariage
The reason I was in Paris in the first place was because an old friend, from my university athletics days, was getting married nearby! 🎊
A time was had (and the break was very much needed)! ✨
Pas un francophone
In preparation for this trip to France, I started increasing my French language learning and speaking.
Exiting Gare du Nord, I headed straight to nearby Carton for a coffee and croissant (as recommended by one of our wonderful volunteer Librarians), excited to try out my French (which at this point I’d first started learning over twenty years ago…).
Well…the person who served me was unfriendly and impatient, which I know is a risk in the city, especially in the touristy areas. But still, I sat down to eat my pastries feeling a little dejected. 😞
Turns out I just needed warming up and some patient servers who perked up upon me saying “Oui, je parle anglais, mais je voudrais essayer français, s’il vous plaît”.
After a couple days, I started surprising people who had assumed, fairly so, that I was a beginner in the language.
As part of my workation, I also exercised and danced every morning (my accommodation had a yoga studio that was always empty so I got a dance space to myself every day) and had a 1.5 hour coffee, cake, and reading session every afternoon. 🥹
So, after getting more comfortable with my French, despite feeling a little put off at first, I’ve left Paris thinking that I just need to go back there for workations way more often!
By next issue…
I hope to have finished up V1 of the new Favorites feature, caught up with all bugs and software updates, and worked on the next stages of our Giveaways automation and librarian tooling.
What I'm reading
I’ve owned Sarah Winman’s Still Life for a few years now. Glad to have finally started it! (Bighead, I’ve started it, okay! 😌)
Have a great week,
Nadia