With development on Pine.blog v1.2 wrapping up, and a releasable version in sight, I've been thinking about why this version has taken so much longer than the previous two. My answer in short: I kept adding features.
Pine.blog 1.2 is a huge update, and it was intended to be, but as time went on it kept getting bigger mostly because I kept wanting "just one more feature". On the web side, I've improved the performance, finished most of the groundwork for the public API, added lots of tests to ensure I'm not accidentally breaking things, and added a 7-day free trial for new users. On the iOS side I've added the ability to follow and unfollow sites directly from the app, recommend sites to other users, browse a site's previous posts, you can now post to your own site, and there's a new Search/Discover tab with a browsable directory of new and interesting sites to follow. All in all, version 1.2 has probably 2-3 times as many features as the 1.1 version does, and I can say that v1.2 is at a point now where it has most of the features I originally envisioned for Pine.blog.
With all that though, I'm not sure if it's a better strategy to release a steady stream of minor updates or hold things back for a few big releases every couple months. The same work gets done, but the steady stream means that more features would be released sooner instead of being held back for a major release. On the flip side though, its a lot harder to promote and get people excited about a minor release than a major one. And even if one approach is better than the other, I'll probably still find myself tacking on "just one more thing" into every release (I guess the hard part is limiting myself to just one "just one more thing").
Regardless, I'm super excited to get v1.2 out into the world, so keep a weather eye on the horizon.
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