Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned #

todoist-habitrpg #

Mike Kusold / @mikekusold

About Me #

Full-Stack Software Engineer at JumpCloud
Developing NodeJS professionally for 1.5 years
Lover of all things web related
Lifehacker

Love the web because of global reach and impact

Todoist #

Todoist

Powerful ToDo List

Able to handle complex workflows
Well suited for managing small projects
Beautiful mobile app

HabitRPG #

HabitRPG

Gamified Habit and ToDo Tracker

Explain difference between Habits/Dailies/ToDos
Parties and Quests adds accountability
Don’t complete a daily, take damage
Rewards: Get gold from completing tasks. Use it to buy rewards
Items Drops: Pets + Food = Mounts. Collection

Why I Use Both #

HabitRPG: Great for habits and accountability
Todoist: Great for projects
Todoist: Has a beautiful mobile app

HabitRPG: Horrible Mobile App

todoist-habitrpg #

One way sync from Todist -> HabitRPG

npm install -g todoist-habitrpg

Designed to be ran as a cron job.
Translates Todoist workflow to HabitRPG workflow

todoist-habitrpg #

NPM Stats

NPM Stats

Github Stats

Github Stats

Launched Aug 7th.
779 npm downloads in 2014

Lessons Learned So Far #

Documentation is essential #

First launched with minimal documentation
Rapidly expanded it
Should have launched with documentation

Documentation #

Write for your audience
Verbose README

My audience isn’t technical.
How to install it? NodeJS + NPM
How to run?
What features does it has?
What limitations?
Common troubleshooting. Bug with Windows NodeJS Installer
Limitations == ToDo for contributors

Tests from day 1 #

Initially meant to be a small personal project
Early PR had large changes.
How do I know it preserves behavior?
Had to hold off on PR until I wrote tests

Tests are critical #

Complete test coverage
Make it easy to run the tests
Continuous Integration
Stay green

Helps to maintain backwards compatibility
Helps with refactors
CI is the truth

Management can be hard and time consuming #

Managing Pull Requests #

Used to let PRs sit for a long time
Used to allow PRs without tests, then write tests later

Pull Requests #

Be communicative
Require Tests
PR your own features

If you can’t look at something right away, let them know that you will look at it soon.
Helps to leave a feature trail for watchers.
I often will write tests myself if a PR doesn’t have any. Will not scale.
You can merge your own PRs right away if you believe they are not controversial.

Managing Issues #

Used to ignore issues that I didn’t find important
Used to let them pile up
Used to answer questions in multiple places

Issues #

Review often
Make use of labels
Redirect users to Github

One of my favorite labels is “Help Wanted”
It allows contributors to see what you would like help with
There are many ways to reach me. But if someone wants help with an issue, I try to direct them to create a github issue for full transparency.

People are afraid to contribute #

I’m sorry to open another issue, but here I am.

…but if you ever feel like I’m overstepping my bounds in responding to Github issues, feel free to tell me and I’ll back off.

Helped out user to solve an important and critical bug
Had to get HabitRPG admins involved
3 Stories were spawned
Main contributor.
Fast issue responses
Many pull requests

Rule #1 #

Don’t be an ass

Good rule in general for life
Try to foster a welcoming community
Don’t act like things are beneath you
Try not to just say “Read the README”

Acknowledge Contributions #

Thank You

Pull Requests
Issue Answers
Documentation Help

Thank you for the PRs!
Num. 1 Bug Finder
Thank you for taking time to do this

No one stumbles upon projects #

Advertise it #

Tell people about in places your audience goes

HabitRPG Wiki
HabitRPG Chat
HabitRPG IRC

Choosing the right language #

NodeJS - Disadvantages #

Difficult for non-developers to setup
Large program dependency

Need to add it to PATH
Why do I need NodeJS to run a simple program?
Is this a virus?
Should have used go

NodeJS - Advantages #

Easy Development
Large Development Community
JSON and API requests
Great for distributing updates

Thank You #

Lessons Learned # todoist-habitrpg # Mike Kusold / @mikekusold