New Releases, Bugs, and All That Running

PUBLIC CHALK Beta was finally released on September 6, 2008. Oddly enough this was also the wedding day of Matt and Sarah – our lead programmer and the woman who somehow tolerates John and me. Maybe she really does think that the functionality is cool after all.

We did release a bunch of really cool usability and behind the scenes features that you can check out the features in the new features blog.

As with any release, there are bugs. Some are very frustrating because they are things that we tested and fixed while in the development database that somehow managed to make it into the production database. Others are brand new “undocumented features” that we really don’t want but didn’t ever think of testing for. We have documented those and have them in the hopper to get fixed.

Here is a tip for anybody in the software industry… do not do a major release the day of your lead programmer’s wedding… especially if he is planning to go to Croatia for two weeks and be generally unreachable.

The good part about this release is that we have noted that despite the bugs that the software on the whole is generally good and useable even though it isn’t the prettiest user interface on the planet. We have also noted a bunch of things (not bugs) that will make the software even more usable and we will be implementing those in a future release.

For now, though, I think I’ll go for a nice long run. A 220 mile relay through New Hampshire actually in the Reach the Beach Relay. I’m leaving tomorrow and I’ll be back on Saturday night. This will leave John alone with his thoughts… unless a few of you want to join PUBLIC CHALK and talk to John in one of his crews.

ETJ