Bridges.algo

Hi for obvious reasons, I do not post internal Algorand Foundation slack messages, but I decided to post this one from our head of product management @larkinyoung_ He sent it to everyone this morning. It's just to show y'all some detail around what goes into a delivery like this, but also how the teams at AF prioritize kindness and cooperation always. We are just so lucky to have these guys, each and every one of them. It's long but sooo worth reading to the end (the @s though are slack @s not twitter @s) --> The day is finally here. AlgoKit 3.0 is now officially released! Over a year of incredibly hard work by our development partner, MakerX, our own insanely talented AlgoKit engineering team, and of course the tireless and invaluable efforts of our indomitable Developer Relations team. AlgoKit 3.0 marks a sea change in development tooling on Algorand that will transform the ecosystem. Algorand Typescript, a redesigned Utils library, advanced unit testing, visual smart contract debugging, Lora the Explorer, subscriber libraries, and of course a completely redesigned, rebuilt Algorand Developer Portal will enable countless new and experienced developers to build incredibly cool things on Algorand. AlgoKit 3.0 was a monumental effort. Absurdly complex technical problems were solved, countless hours of testing, testing, and more testing. So many hours spent engaging with the community, listening to their successes, pains, joys, and frustrations…so many frustrations. Our AlgoKit team and MakerX have built something incredible here, and I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve built. The new developer portal is also a beautiful thing. It’s hard to overstate how important this effort is, especially if you remember trying to learn development on Algorand back in the days when information on building smart contracts or interacting with the Algorand blockchain was inconsistent, fragmented, and frequently outdated. The lack of cohesive and working code examples and end-to-end tutorials was frustrating. This is no longer the case. Working with @Brian and the DevRel team, we have created, transformed, and ported nearly 650 technical documents, pushed over 1000 commits, closed 300 PRs and now after 6 months of sustained effort, the new Algorand Developer Portal is live. Designed to be incredibly fast and responsive, with a fit-for-purpose taxonomy and information architecture, and optimized for consumption by LLMs, we believe that the new developer portal will be incredibly popular with the community and will usher in a whole new cohort of Algorand devs. With over 2000 individual code snippets and ~130 new full code examples across Typescript, Python, and TEAL, devs have an incredible amount of resources at their disposal. I want to thank the DevRel team for their tireless efforts. Building technical documentation is harder than most people think. It requires diligence, patience, unceasing attention to detail, and reviews, reviews, and more reviews. Nearly ever single document you see in the new portal has been touched by nearly everyone involved. I want to thank: @Astha, for being an invaluable and reliable partner to help coordinate dev portal efforts, while at the same time being everywhere all at once. She is always there to help and is an absolute pleasure to work with. Despite having to meet at all hours of the day @Gabe, for your tireless work ethic and impressive attention to detail; you joined just in time for this effort! @Chris Kim, for your professionalism, wealth of Algorand knowledge, and willingness to jump right in and get your hands dirty. Your future as a tech podcaster is also promising. @Marco, for your ascerbic wit, endless curiosity, and laser focus. @Evert, for quietly just getting the work done and delivering quality content. So very quietly. @Stéphane, for always being willing to pick up work on top of his existing commitments, for the incredible work you did bringing ARCs to the dev portal. @Michael Feher, for literally helping me solve every difficult problem I come across, whether it’s bizarre build errors, obscure CSS rendering issues, insanely complex technical problems, or just a great sounding board for wild ideas, you’ve been an invaluable part of this effort and a pleasure to work with. I just wish you knew a bit more about Astro. We’ll get there. @Brian, for being a bedrock of the whole developer portal effort. Your incredible knowledge of Algorand, ceaseless drive to improve and perfect, and passion for the ecosystem is a major factor in our success. But, please, stop hogging all of the swag, dude. @dreds, for your impressive engineering talent, open-mindedness, and incredible work ethic. You are always willing to hop on a call and solve problems together, and your laser focus on improving AlgoKit and building a magnificent engineering team is invaluable. You also really love wool hats, and that’s cool, too. @Joe P for bring your brilliant engineering brain to every problem, and for always being ready to help, and for just being a genuinely lovely fellow. @Giorgio Ciotti for your impressive coding skills, consummate knowledge of Algorand, and amazing attitude. @Shane McGovern, for keeping everything from exploding and allowing us to focus on building content and writing code. He has far more important work to do here, so we very much appreciate his support throughout the past year. And for his sunny disposition and insistence on giving everyone daily affirmations. @Alexa Carr, @Gulsah Yurdakul, @Emma, @Margarida Soares, and the rest of the marketing team for their hard work on the launch campaign, all the many assets that had to be created, and for bearing with the manic activities of the past few weeks. Thank you all! I am sure I have forgotten some, so a big thanks to anyone that has contributed to this effort in any way, shape, or form. Thank you!! Please check out our new shiny things! Algorand Developer Portal dev.algorand.co Our brand new interactive tutorials platform tutorials.dev.algorand.co Our shiny examples gallery examples.dev.algorand.co Lora the Explorer lora.algokit.io 📷 📷

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