/notes/ ·
A new chapter starts when the tests go green
Selda is in production. A new chapter does not start with an announcement; it starts the moment you deploy and the tests come back green against prod. That happened tonight. In a few hours the first campaigns go out, and from then on the thing works in the open or it doesn't.
Ten months of work, and the last six of them heads-down. Sixteen-hour days, first for weeks and then for months: writing, testing, deleting, testing again. Almost none of that was visible from outside. It is most of what building actually is, and it is the part that never makes the story. It is a quarter to two in the morning as I write this, which is about right.
The moment I stopped doubting it was not a test passing. Someone outside the project used Selda without me in the room and got a real result out of it on their own, while I sat on a call for two and a half hours. I had run thousands of tests by then and I already believed it worked. Believing it and watching a stranger get there without you are different things.
Two years and six months since the last thing started. I would have taken this outcome at the beginning of it. Good to still be here, and better to have something to send out in the morning.
The hard part starts now anyway. A product in production is not a product anyone uses yet. If this holds up over the autumn I would like to have something worth showing at Slush.
Today I find out which product I have.