Week 921

I had a slightly bumpy start to the week, struggling to find motivation and feeling a bit frustrated with things not going as quickly as I’d like them to. I felt better after a couple of fairly productive days refactoring some code to make a change easy, and then making that change.

We’re still working most of our time on Mavis. This week saw the release of the clinics functionality we’ve been working on, allowing teams around the country to organise and invite patients to have vaccinations in locations other than schools. This should allow the teams to improve the take-up of vaccinations in a more targetted way, and I’m really pleased we’ve been able to be part of the team delivering that outcome. I’m constantly impressed and encouraged by how much care our clinical, design, copy-writing, product and other colleagues take. It’s great to be part of a team that clearly puts the user first.

After we all chatted about it in a developer catchup a couple of weeks ago, Chris put the hard work in to start making it easier to internationalise our application. We don’t have a concrete user need for that just yet but this will make it much easier when we do. Getting a head start on extracting hard-coded strings from the application into locale files has side-benefits too: it makes it easier for our colleagues to make copy changes, and it makes the application code internally consistent. Friend of the co-op Tekin talks about some other lesser-known approaches and benefits in his great Brighton Ruby talk from this year.

I continue to find the state of the tech industry depressing. I suspect in reality it has more to do with the global finance than anything else, but seeing the huge amounts of money poured into deeply unpleasant technology when there are very worthy and valuable open-source projects crying out for help is tough to deal with.

I’ve also been trying as much as I can to avoid using any “AI” technology. I feel strongly that any purported benefits do not justify the costs. I’ve even been doing a little coding for fun using my hands and brain.

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a meet-up, conference or community of some kind that celebrates and encourages the humanity in coding. Maybe something like the AI-“sober” Creative Bevians or Computation Club of old. Or maybe I just need to move on and get with the programme? Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, as they say. You know where to find us if any of my ramblings ring a bell.

Until next time

– Chris