How We Make Trello

#1

Post by spolsky » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 3:28 PM UTC

Re: How We Make Trello

#2

Post by basicallydan » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 3:33 PM UTC

Fog Creek are the _kings and queens_ of dogfooding. Spolsky, you sure have nurtured a group of very loyal team players. I applaud you all. It must be really nice to work at a place where the love of the process and the product are both so strong.

In my opinion if there's one thing a reader should take away from this it should be that Single Page Apps and separation of server and client are The. Best. Thing. Ever. From the start, design your system this way.

Good post, and an entertaining read.

Re: How We Make Trello

#3

Post by allcentury » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 3:55 PM UTC

I've used Trello & FogBugz over the years and we've even modeled some of our software after some of the practices they've written about. Amazing stuff!

Re: How We Make Trello

#4

Post by badman_ting » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 3:59 PM UTC

It's almost comical how nobody at my company would ever take a project this seriously. Good for them, Trello is awesome.

Re: How We Make Trello

#5

Post by iLoch » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

basicallydan wrote: post #2

Fog Creek are the _kings and queens_ of dogfooding. Spolsky, you sure have nurtured a group of very loyal team players. I applaud you all. It must be really nice to work at a place where the love of the process and the product are both so strong. In my opinion if there's one thing a reader should take away from this it should be that Single Page Apps and separation of server and client are The. Best. Thing. Ever. Fro…

While I don't think client side apps are the only way of doing things, I will say that I think client side apps will become much more popular once browsers get a little better.

I love the separation of concerns that is possible with JS apps - you can have one team working on the API and one on the interface and the only place they really need to communicate is in the API documentation. Once it's all done, you've already got a fully functional and secure API (because it wasn't an afterthought) that can be used for other clients.

Re: How We Make Trello

#6

Post by mikegioia » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 4:05 PM UTC

Does anyone know how the server determines which channel the client should be using? Are they doing this check at the apache/nginx level, or on the server right after the user is authenticated, and before the client code is sent?

Re: How We Make Trello

#7

Post by gomox » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 4:22 PM UTC

mikegioia wrote: post #6

Does anyone know how the server determines which channel the client should be using? Are they doing this check at the apache/nginx level, or on the server right after the user is authenticated, and before the client code is sent?

Good question, I wondered about this as well. Channel switching would certainly create issues on data model changes in the underlying store.

Re: How We Make Trello

#8

Post by basicallydan » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 4:29 PM UTC

iLoch wrote: post #5

basicallydan wrote: post #2

Fog Creek are the _kings and queens_ of dogfooding. Spolsky, you sure have nurtured a group of very loyal team players. I applaud you all. It must be really nice to work at a place where the love of the process and the product are both so strong. In my opinion if there's one thing a reader should take away from this it should be that Single Page Apps and separation of server and client are The. Best. Thing. Ever. Fro…

While I don't think client side apps are the only way of doing things, I will say that I think client side apps will become much more popular once browsers get a little better. I love the separation of concerns that is possible with JS apps - you can have one team working on the API and one on the interface and the only place they really need to communicate is in the API documentation. Once it's all done, you've alre…

> I love the separation of concerns that is possible with JS apps - you can have one team working on the API and one on the interface and the only place they really need to communicate is in the API documentation.

Yeah, me too. Apart from the actual, observable benefits you mentioned, I just find something really satisfying about the separation. Fewer hacks, easier to modify things.

I think the rise in the popularity of doing things this way is largely thanks to the increase in popularity of test-driven development. Creating a client app without an API is so easy given all the tools available for mocking or faking APIs, and creating a standalone API is easy given that most of the time, you're just testing the JSON or XML output of a bunch of functions.

Re: How We Make Trello

#9

Post by haymills » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 4:32 PM UTC

So interesting!

Re: How We Make Trello

#10

Post by dpatti » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 4:44 PM UTC

mikegioia wrote: post #6

Does anyone know how the server determines which channel the client should be using? Are they doing this check at the apache/nginx level, or on the server right after the user is authenticated, and before the client code is sent?

Because we are only delivering multiple clients, it means we only have one server version running at a time. Then, after authentication, we decide which client version you will be receiving based on your chosen channel and hashed member id in the case of multiple distributions within the channel.