Thanks for sharing your plans. I cannot believe what ton of work you did in 2017, just amazing!
From developer perspective and especially as windows user I would like to see easy to use docker images to run a local testnet. This is really painful and unfortunately there is no really good step-by-step manual. I think many projects currently "spam" the mainnet with their prototype applications. This is something we could and should avoid easily.
I am currently exploring how to run a node, create accounts and making use of the steem api in general.
I found some sources that it is (or was?) possible to create multi-authority-accounts. Is this still possible and can you provide a (new) blog entry about that topic? That would be great!
I think in general it would be great to have an improved section for development and api documentation. http://developers.steem.io seems to only touch the surface. Running a testnet, setting up multi-authority-accounts, building a development-pipeline. These are the "pain points" I am currently facing.
I also consider to be a witness in future. But there is also many information that has to be collected from different sources.
Besides this "newbie"-materials I am absolutely with you! Onboarding process needs to be simplyfied and I am looking forward to see your API platform/backend :-)
Keep up the good work!
Note: if anybody can answer my questions regarding testnet on docker and multi-authority-accounts -> help is appreciated :D
Setting up a testnet on steem isn't something anyone's tackled at this point (besides the Steemit team afaik). I don't think I can point you to anything that allows for a quick/easy setup of your own local testnet.
Because of this, most of us just use the mainnet for actual testing.