23. Release 0.2.0

Over a year since the last release, here is the second.

I discovered that because I start most feature work as an essay describing it, I can use links to these posts in the change log. This is nicer than the more conventional option of linking in to an issue tracker (or citing an issue without a link, which is sadly common). It also insulates Mismiy from the particular source-code-hosting service I happen to be using at the time. (At the time of writing I am using GitHub to publish code; I think that given Microsoft’s descent in to LLM madness I should move to somewhere less commercial when I can find the time and energy.)

So far my approach to developing Mismiy is to introduce the background to the feature in question and then discuss how Mismiy might implement it. This is an essay in one of the older meanings, as of trying out ideas in text, without necessarily knowing what the conclusion will be. When I have decided what I want to add to Mismiy I write unit tests and code in the usual test-first manner. Is this a new paradigm, Essay-Driven Development? Not a whole lot different from Simon Willison’s practice of using a GitHub issue addressed to himself to record his working on a feature (‘The Perfect Commit’).

It is not always obvious when there is enough change to justify a new release, but it occurs to me (with the benefit of hindsight) that immediately before introducing a new feature that breaks earlier behaviour might be it. The breaking change since 0.1.0 is a change in the name of the body_html entry from body.