So, last week was my one year anniversary on Dev.to (and I also hit 10,000 followers 🎉), so I wanted to write a thank you post. That being said, as...
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What a great post! I couldn't agree more. I've posted on Medium and have totaled about 100 reads across 9 articles and the only post to even get "applause" was one in which I was insanely sarcastic about the process of UI/UX design and how no customer will ever be happy with it (can be read here if insterested). And I felt that the applause was only because I poked fun at the life of a front end person from the view of a back end person. There wasn't really any tech discussion that happened, just complaining. Is that the only type of content people will pay attention to? I thought to myself? Not even because I have no followers there, no twitter followers, etc.
Then, I come to dev.to and start posting the same articles here as there and just broke 100 followers last night (woo!!) and have new people follow me every day. I don't think I could assemble a group of 100 colleagues from my 10 year career who would care enough to follow my blog posts, and they know me personally! The exposure to awesome people, the ability to learn and have discussions without trolling, and the moderation and "nip it in the bud" mentality of any trolling is superb. Every time I look at the profile of the moderators or Dev staff, their recent comments are full of "Hey, this is being mean and trollish. The comment was deleted. Keep it up and your account will be to". Which I love! I know some folks think that's censorship and "I should be able to speak my mind". But you can absolutely speak your mind, just be constructive. I feel like sites like Reddit and HackerNews either are afraid of backlash for that kind of moderation, or are too huge and understaffed to care. But these communities are filled with highly educated and brilliant people, both on the user and administrator side, has our experience and education never taught us to speak to each other with respect? Do these people talk to their team at standups or their customers at consultations? If so, just go ahead and be a black hat because being a helpful developer is reserved for professionals who can show some restraint and respect. I love that Dev seems to get that.
The comments are constructive, insightful, and the community of such diverse background that I can see my code from the cultural perspective of somebody in Russia, India, Pakistan, Japan, etc. How we live affects the way we think. How we think affects how we solve problems. Coding, at its core, is problem-solving so having this input is exceptional and getting it in a place where nobody is going to call me a "noob" or be passive-aggressive because they used a different library which is soooooooooo much better is wonderful.
Well, this is more of a rant than a comment so I'll end it here. But to reiterate, I agree and love this platform so far. Thank you, good night.
Awesome! Totally agree! :)
This is really super.
As creators/administrators/insiders, we struggle to see concreteness in our own work. Always stuck in the mindset of where something came from and where it's going, struggling to explain what they are.
I have to admit that posts like this (and communities like dev.to) have renewed a passion for my career. Time can sometimes make you jaded as you experience people of different kinds ruining what should otherwise be an amazing adventure. Thanks for writing this and thank you dev.to for facilitating this space.
Great intro to dev.to Ali! I recommend this site all the time to people, and it's great to see posts that support newcomers.
Also wanted to take the time to say thank you for sharing Dan and I's podcast, really means a lot that you enjoy it.
:)
Oh definitely! The podcast is an awesome feature, and a great way to hear more about posts!
It's a good short review and quick tutorial for how new comer using dev.to , like me. Thank you for posting this .
I’ve just stumbled across Dev recently and the quality of the content and wisdom of the interactions stands out. Thanks for tipping me off about the reading list!
I like the direct access of Dev. With medium you have the necessity of befriending the gatekeeper publications and worrying if you’ll get published there. It’s inspired me to post more too!
🤔
So, just taking a look at the network tab of this article...
That's 196 individual HTTP requests to read a single article, requiring just under 6 MB of data in total.
Not to mention the two scripts that Firefox refused to load because content blocking is enabled by default in my browser.
One of my favourite things about Dev.to is its diversity of opinions and experiences, partly driven by its worldwide reach (as mentioned by @kaelscion ). I wonder how many more developers would be reached if the page was a few KBs big, made one or two requests to load, and ran no unnecessary scripts.
Page load is a diversity issue.
Well, I don't think the two things are mutually exclusive.
Dev.to is quite fast if you start to click around but it can always be better
It's also open source if you want to look into it ;-)
Thanks for the shoutout, Ali :). I really like what you did here, I think it was perfectly timed. Malik and I have talked about how, as this community grows, it falls to the users to a) maintain the vibe and b) scale/creatively build on top of the great platform the team has given us, because at a certain point it needs to become self-sustaining if it’s to remain healthy. This strikes me as a great “onboarding” topic, because I think we’re getting to a point where users are about to start doing more and more interesting stuff, and it will be hard to surface without community involvement.
Thanks for writing this post Ali! Your post plus Arik's post about ways to make the most of dev.to really helped me with getting started as a newcomer. I actually shared Ben's post about performance with my team since it's something we're focused on currently with our own product.
Yes!! I recommend it to my students too! Blogging is so important!
Really I hope more and more people and companies discover this amazing place.
There is no place like
127.0.0.1Dev.toAnd this excellent post will be useful to reach this target.
Hi Ali, is it possible to have publications here just like publications in Medium, I mean, to let people submit their articles, then with some publication editors, let them either be published or rejected.
I'm assessing several options, and I've never have used dev.to
Thanks for your help
C.D
Thank you for this great post, Ali and this great introduction to the universe of the DEV community. I only joined at the beginning of the month, but I already have a feeling that I have found the right community for me. Now I just need to jump the last hurdle and start posting myself
Thanks for putting this together. Some of them are obvious but some are not so. I wonder why medium does not get similar engagement as dev. Is it simply because it is already too crowded. Will dev become similar to medium as it scales bigger?
Are there any new features/suggestions you would like to see?
I have some questions: Are the live events recorded somehow? How can I opt-out for the „Who is looking for Opensource contributors“ newsletter?
Hi Ikem, you most likely received the 'who is looking for open source contributors' email as part of the dev digest.
You can opt-out of that by visiting /settings/notifications and unchecking
Send me a periodic digest of top posts from my tags. Keep mind, this digest sends different articles so it won't always be about open source projects.Yes! #DevLive for the events! @ben @jess @peter may be able to answer the newsletter one better -- I don't get that email!
Beautiful article as you are! 300th heart goes to you! Couldn't agree with you more about medium stuff. 🤣🤣🤣 I'm the another one who migrated from medium.com. Thanks to your guide, I could import my previous my articles in medium.
I think this is a great introduction. This is my first time at dev.to just because I saw your tweet! Hope to navigate the site during my free time.
Awesome! Yay!
Can we sticky this? :)
Nice write up Ali.S
What a great post so on point! 👌
I think this being a smaller community makes it easier to post and get a discussion going, I'll probably be making my first post later tonight (like 4 in the morning knowing me).
Not sure what the choice ❤️ vs 🦄 means :)
Just do both if you really like the post!
This was awesome! I have just moved over here from Medium with the hopes of really ramping up my article posting. This guide helped me understand some of the benefits of dev.to, so thank you!
Thank you for the shoutout, Ali <3 <3
Surely going to refer to this article at some point in the future in one of my comments :D
Thanks Ali
So, this article is going to be suggested to all new users, right @ben , @jess , and @peter ? :P
Hi, I had a doubt. How does the @ThePracticalDev Twitter help in increasing readership for a post?
This is such a great post!
I love the mentorship piece, but do not see it under my Settings - is it no longer available?
What a great post! I
Amazing post, ended up reading a few things from here, and quickly decided to join, seeing this made me happy to see how healthy this community is
Looking forward to be a part of it
Super cool post for my first approach in dev.to
Thanks!!
Thank you so much for the post Ali, very helpful as a dev.to new member! I have a quick question - where can I subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get the top posts of the week?
Its all I needed. :)
Can I translate this article to Japanese?
I'm okay with it as long as you link back to the original with attribution!