Developer’s Journal

The week actually ended on a high note. The previous app update finally went out, bringing translation support along with a bunch of new languages. We also sent a newsletter and received a few replies from customers. Positive ones. Always nice to see. Finished work early on Friday and made a conscious decision to spend the weekend not thinking about Hydra at all. Then Saturday night happened. Support emails started coming in. Apparently online sync had decided it no longer wanted to behave and devices weren’t receiving updates from the online database in real time. All hands on deck. This was an emergency. Most of Saturday night disappeared into debugging. Then most of Sunday followed. Monday arrived and we were still chasing the problem. On Tuesday, we finally figured out what was actually happening. The fix itself wasn’t particularly complicated. The investigation was. It’s funny how these things work. Figuring out why something is happening almost always takes significantly longer than fixing it. Promised an update by the end of the week. Released it on Wednesday. Not too shabby.

We’re live. The newsletter went out and the website instantly got very, very busy. Possibly a bit too busy. Shit. Might need to upgrade the server before it decides to catch fire. The first sale happened. Yay! That felt nice. Now I’m mostly waiting for the first “something is horribly wrong” email to arrive. Hopefully it won’t. Instead, the inbox is currently filling up with pre-sale questions, setup questions, compatibility questions and various other Hydra-related things. Which is actually a good sign. It means people care enough to ask. Someone suggested throwing a launch party. I don’t think so. At the moment the party theme would probably just be “replying to emails”. Might allow a few beers later if the dust settles. Hopefully it won’t. Nothing against cold beer, but I’d much rather have people talking about Hydra. That means Hydra lives. Beer will still be cold tomorrow. Or the day after that. Damn. I need it now. Oh, what the heck. Will have one now.

The guys from the office, as well as a few people from Tickera, have been pushing me towards officially releasing Hydra and finally going live. And I don’t think we’re fully ready. Funny thing is, if someone asked me two weeks ago, I would’ve confidently said yes. Now I’m not so sure anymore. Which is strange, considering how much improved during those same two weeks. The more things get polished, the more new details appear asking for attention. But then again, I’m starting to realize something: I probably would never feel completely ready anyway. And there’s that old one: Done beats perfect. So I guess tomorrow is a pretty big day. Tickera will be sending a newsletter to their users. That feels suspiciously close to a point of no return. Mommy! I’m scared!

Woke up around 4 AM today after realizing something important was missing.
Privacy controls inside Hydra Bridge itself…

Got a Windows machine a few days ago and built the first Windows flavor of Hydra.
Works nicely. Suspiciously nice…

After the initial f-up powered entirely by yours truly and a quick resubmission, Apple approved it…

The macOS release got rejected.
And reaction was somewhere between confusion and “what the actual f…udge?”

While waiting for the apps to hopefully get approved, I started building another one on top of the existing Hydra infrastructure…

Apple said yes.

Somewhat.

They sent a few questions yesterday to better understand how the app works and what exactly it does.
Fair enough.

Spent nearly seven hours going through submission requirements for the Apple App Store and Google Play…