As you all know, in replacement of the original Hive front-end, our great developers created another version, much improved, and we're now able to work on it. I was, I'd say, also involved in the creation of the new version a bit, by helping testing the site, filling issues on Gitlab, from my poor connection in Turkey, which helps for people who have the same bad internet. It was really a great opportunity, because I was actually able to complain about the things that were always uncomfortable for my, as a writer's usage. So after I was finding quite a few issues, telling our great witness of hive @gtg about them, and filing them, as he asked, we noticed the work on those issues was not that productive. So @gtg, thought it will be a great idea, to let me try helping with the process, so I can see, how does working on the project, and everyday of keeping Hive alive looks like in real life, what are the hard parts of dealing with the bugs I'm complaining about, why it's so hard to fix them, and maybe I can even help by fixing those myself. So, I was invited by him to visit a workplace of developers of the team — @thebeedevs, to see how the real life work looks, try fixing and adding features I want on Hive, and so, also make it available for the usage faster. I myself, am not into programming at all, I know this 🤏 much about that sphere, and I didn't have any idea on how work with issues looks like at all, and moreover, how would I myself do it. But our Wizard, was very confident, and assured me, that I'm capable of doing everything, so with such convincing words, it was impossible to refuse, and so I was like, sure let's go then. So, that way, we made plans for the office visit, to Poland, Ðąbrowa Górnicza in February. I guess that confidence came from the fact that Gandalf thought it would be fun to get me closer to the programming world, to finally make me a developer, and you know, when @gtg has a goal, it's very hard to interfere with it. So, flying to Poland in February, and making big efforts to wake up at 7 am, I did it.
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On the way, with our special mode of transportation, I was introduced to @itsola, the project manager of the @thebeedevs team. Coming to the office, I met many developers, I feel like we got along quite well, not including some inconveniences.
Meeting the Office manager, it was very welcoming from their side, to give me such a nice gift, of an official t-shirt of @thebeedevs, two of their notebooks with a pen, a thermos and even an own access key card! 😃. Didn't have my name on it though, so I had to come up with something)))
A bit of modelling here ;-) (A super cool t-shirt demonstration, front 😄)
(Super cool t-shirt's back Hive logo demonstration)
(Notebooks with the pen, and the access key card, didn't take a photo of the thermos for some reason)
One of the notebooks, I used for an inspection, to write down each developer's performances, to actually see, if the @thebeedevs team, is as great as they claim to be. And I was writing down all of their names down also, so i don't forget them. Sadly, some got a pretty bad rating right away. But with some, I was amazed with how dedicated they were to their job. I also couldn't believe the number of people i met, and that was not even all of them, some were away during my visit.
So, first of all, my goal in the office was to fix some issues which were the most pain in the back for me, and to add a feature I needed for my work on hive. After discussing though, we decided this time, to focus on only one of all The person who was my greatest guide while we were deciding on how to solve the issues was @barddev, with him it was truly understandable, as for a person like me, who doesn't really know much about programming. So, if you like rebbloging as much as me, so you don't lose the article etc, you're definitely using the reblog button a lot, sometimes without even opening the detail view of the article, since it takes more time. So the old hive.blog version had that feature, to reblog it right away, on the post card, but the new one had it removed. It was a problem for the site, as every time you enter the page, it was overloading the server, cause the system was making too much calls to ask if the reblog button on the post card of each article in the feed was already used, showing it as red, if it was.
Of course, my complaint was that it was quite uncomfortable, to enter the detail viewer, anytime I wanted to make a reblog, so we decided to think of a solution to the problem. How to make it available on the post cover, without making an overload for the server. So @barddev, found an amazing solution, and with his detailed instruction, I was assigned to fix it by myself. Of course, not me myself, I'm not a developer, for that @gtg got me some help, which was my friend — Claude Monet Oh what a bad idea to mix an AI agent's name with an artist's one, that would be a big drama on the internet if it would actually be named like that. But sorry, I can't think of anything else when i hear that name, counting in that Claude Monet is my favourite artist 👩🎨
Anyways, back to the solution. So filling another issue on Gitlab, what we (me 1% Monet 99%) did, was, making the button available, but letting it check if it was already pressed only when it's actually pressed, and once the icon with "Reblog this post" pops up, with ok/cancel, if it's pressed, it shows the ok button as grey instead, and it's written "you have already reblogged this post" above it. After the main change was done by Claude, @barddev tested it, he found some issues with it, we fixed it up again, and after that it was done.
After, @gtg deployed it, and now it's an actual feature on the https://new.hive.blog! Have fun using it :)
The communication in the office was very easy, everyone's English level was really great, except for some figures, so we could not communicate that well, but it wasn't such a big problem, since other people with amazing English level were there to talk and help :-)
THE SERVERS 💪💪🔥
During my excursion over the office, I was able to see the actual servers on which Hive is actually being developed on. I never knew before, that sites are actually based on something physical!
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I also noticed that it was a very extraordinary working space. Interesting sights everywhere.
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The most fun thing I noticed, that a lot of people there had rubber ducks on the table near their working places. Developers told me about a fenomen of why they had those ducks. Those ducks are actually special "assistants" of their, which are a great help in the programming work. When you're too focused in your work, sometimes you can't notice a mistake you made, so they're telling about what they're doing to the ducks, and that way they see their actions from another point of view, and that way, it's easier to find the issue. I feel like that can be really useful in whole lot of sphere's :-) I guess I used that sometimes while writing description for my articles before, but instead of a duck, talking with my other personality 😂
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In the last day of my visits to the office, I took a photo with the greatest and most professional developers, so you can also see who works everyday to let you use Hive without issues. Person on the left, the @barddev, is the developer with who we brought the reblog feature back. His main speciality is a front-end developer. It was a great cooperation with him, in my notebook, he's having one of the highest positions in working productively, and international communication. Next to that guy — Gregory, the amazing server expert. He actually manages all the technical stuff at the office! Even the security system to which I got a card — issued by him. The next is — me obviously, with my legendary notebook, and then there's — Adam, a great tester, the professional one, not like me.
Here ⬆️, you see one of the great core development guys — Andrew. It was pleasant to hear about his opinion on how new hive preparation was going, since his opinion really coincided with mine. For this photo, I was sitting in the boss's of the office seat, I hope he doesn't mind! Sadly our schedules fell that way that I couldn't meet him also, but maybe some other occasion.
And so, next, posing with our big catch, we've got @mickiewicz himself in the frame! He's working on Hivemind, and databases.
And the last person I took a photo with that day is Mario, another great developer who's specialised on core development. When I saw that style of his, I was jealous, how can a person look more striking than I do 😄?
Some people sadly couldn't be in the photos, since that day I didn't see them at the office, but they're also really great and dedicated people to their job, some were left out on purpose though.
That way, my visit to the office, at least for this time, comes to an end. I thank all the developers of @thebeedevs team, it was a pleasure working with most of them, the professionalism 🔥! And thank you @gtg, for such an amazing experience. So, like that, after my mission in the office was done, I've spent a few more days in Poland, and after went back to watching hive development from the distance in Turkey. It was really nice meeting you guys. Good job @thebeedevs! (Sorry, I won't be making points I made for each developer in my notebook public)
Bye bye everyone! See ya sometime in the future 😉✈️🖇️
