Thread by @helioscomm

Hey #Holochain crowd. Recently I learned that all the Holochain betas are creating a lot of confusion among people watching the project. The biggest question I heard was "why so may betas?", followed by "why hasn't the #HoloFuel swap started?"

Read on to learn more. 👇🏻🧵

To some, this seems like a change in plans. Nothing has changed, but the important thing to know is that Holochain and Holo Hosting are two different things. Holochain is a app creation toolkit, Holo is a hosting service.

Holochain has got nothing to do with Holo, except Holo (the platform) is being built on Holochain and Holo (the company) is a subsidiary of the Holochain Foundation.

So therefore, Holochain betas have nothing to do with HoloFuel or Holo Hosting, except that they've been waiting for Holochain to mature (while also prototyping/building/testing on earlier immature versions of Holochain). With each Holochain beta, one more component matures.

When Holo Hosting becomes 'beta' (although we probably won't use that term -- maybe we'll call it 'public' or 'production-ready') *that* is when the HoloFuel swap starts. In the meantime, there will be more Holochain beta, each one adding more maturity to the framework.

So why are there so many Holochain betas? How many more can we expect?

To help you understand this, I'd like to share a bit about the software dev process. When you release a product for public use, the version number isn't just a number -- it's chosen to communicate something.

For end-user software, a big version number bump communicates "hey, this thing has changed in a big way, and it's got lots of cool new features." Essentially it's a marketing device.

But for software meant for developers, like Holochain, it means something more precise. Every time the leftmost number increases, it means "the way you use this thing has changed, dear developer, and that probably means you'll have to update your code."

Software release managers call this a "breaking change" because it breaks existing code. It's a necessary part of software development; sometimes internal changes mean that a function the developer uses has to change the way it receives or returns data.

But we'll also be using version number bumps for marketing purposes -- communicating to developers that this new version may not break their code, but it does come with new features or complete a roadmap milestone holochain.org/roadmap/

For instance, I don't think the upcoming Holochain 0.3 beta introduces any breaking changes, but it will vastly improve offline-mode, which will be important for the hApp we're offering to #DWebCamp to help participants schedule and take notes for sessions.

So, back to your question. How many more betas?

As many as it takes to create a complete Holochain 1.0 product. But don't worry too much about the numbers -- they simply mean that progress is happening.

Whether it's two more betas with huge changes or two hundred betas with tiny changes (don't worry -- we won't do that), the work will still progress as fast as is responsible. We're working our arses off to create something robust, stable, and useful for everyday apps.

I'm not sure if Holo beta needs to wait for Holochain 1.0; it may be that Holochain will be ready for a public Holo network before 1.0 comes. Stay tune.