Weeknotes 2021 WK 1

Preparing for the Django 3.2 feature freeze

This week was dominated by preparing for the Django 3.2 feature freeze, which is due January 14. As ever, there’s a big long list, far too long really, of things we’d like to get in. Both Mariusz and I are heads-down trying to knock off as many as we can.

Highlights from this week include support for functional indexes and extracting the admin’s CSS colours into variables, that will allow themes. (Dark mode, oooh! 🥳)

The alpha will likely be next week, and from there we have a couple of months for you to help find the issues before the final thing in April. Check the draft Django 3.2 release notes for the upcoming changes. It’s shaping up to another great release.

Button Saturday

I did the annual Year in review over the holidays. One thing I noticed was that work on Button ground almost to a halt when the pandemic hit at the end of Q1. I’d begun in earnest after DjangoCon US in Oct. 2019, and had been making good progress until February, but very little after then, for simple want of capacity.

There’s nothing wrong with that — there’s an accursed pandemic on! — but I committed to launching this year, so I must find the time.

The general principle is that ongoing work should be scheduled. So, I’ve moved things around to make Saturday mornings Button Saturday: a concrete block where I can sit down and focus on finishing things off.

This week was the first session.

I was working on the app integration with AWS IAM — identity and access management. This is one of the key areas that you can’t escape but in which there’s far more complexity than is necessary or reasonable for the ”I just want to get my app online” use-case. It’s an early target for Button because I can add value here without needing the app itself to be feature complete.

Progress was good. It’s so nice to have the time available!

With Button Saturday scheduled, I’m looking at what’s addressable within the Q1 timeframe for an initial release. Looking to open up early access over the next month or so. I’ll post details here, or you can sign up for email updates.

Our-ma-mageddon

The elder kids got Magic: the gathering starter decks for Christmas. (I’ll tell you there’s some badass Plainswalkers that we never had in my day!)

A couple of days later I had a rummage in the back of the cupboard and pulled out a tapped-up tin, with a layer of dust on it, like something from an Indiana Jones movie.

Inside was my old MTG collection of revised edition cards from circa 1995. The kids were wide-eyed and very pleased to be able to craft a whole load of new decks, including a totally illegal Plague Rat Deck, featuring nothing more than a hoard of the wee-beasties, a number of Dark Rituals, and a chunk of land.

My favourite moment occurs whenever the Armageddon card — Destroy all land — comes up. The kids can’t help but call it Our-ma-mageddon — which is 100% the responsibility of the Lego Movie 2. Inevitably I smile.

Now, can I track down that Dingus egg…? 🧐