# The value of a thousand little features

DevFeed: [The value of a thousand little features](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-value-of-a-thousand-little-features-40638.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://eviltrout.com/blog/2017-04-13-a-thousand-little-features/>)

Published: 2017-04-13T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Robin Ward](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/robin-ward.md>)

Topics: [Software Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software-engineering.md>), [Development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/development.md>), [Rails](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rails.md>), [Ember](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ember.md>), [JavaScript](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/javascript.md>), [Ruby](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ruby.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>), [code reviews](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code-reviews.md>), [test-coverage](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/test-coverage.md>)

Tags: [code-reviews](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-reviews.md>), [coverage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/coverage.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [development](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/development.md>), [ember](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ember.md>), [javascript](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/javascript.md>), [rails](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rails.md>), [ruby](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ruby.md>), [software-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software-engineering.md>)

## AI overview

The author reflects on five years of Discourse development, describing how the team settled on major technical choices such as Rails, ActiveRecord, Postgres, Ember.js, and JavaScript. The article also discusses codebase practices, performance improvements, and planned changes including TypeScript, replacing Sprockets, and upgrading Ruby and Rails.

## Source excerpt

It's been over a year since I wrote a blog entry! And while of course the universal excuse of "I've been busy" applies, I think we reached a point in Discourse's development where we just were able to focus on the product without a lot of stuff getting in our way. I've now been working on Discourse full time for 5 years. In the beginning we had a lot more uncertainty about technical decisions. Some of the things we debated interally include: