Building in public
You know the risk before you start. Everyone tells you: do not build something the platform could ship. You build it anyway, because you need it and nobody has it. Then one Tuesday the release notes arrive.
What the months actually looked like
I want to be precise about the cost, because the cost is the reason the release notes hit the way they did.
Two hours of sleep on a normal night — not one heroic week, the normal shape of the last few months. Work during the day, build in the evening, debug until the birds started. Weekends were the good days, because nobody interrupted.
