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Cover image for Changelog: Announcing DEV Connect! (Beta)

Changelog: Announcing DEV Connect! (Beta)

Ben Halpern on June 14, 2018

We're excited to announce a new part of the site called DEV Connect. Spurred on by an interest from the community in this sort of thing, we've adde...
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Yechiel Kalmenson

Whoa! This is awesome!

I like the mutual follow requirement.

Need to actually start following people now... šŸ˜œ

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Guillaume Martigny

I don't completely get the "mutual follow" rule.

If I'm a newcomer and want to talk to you, I can't do so. I can follow you and hope you follow back, but then you will have to follow everyone looking for mentorship.

It's great for people with many followers, but locked to newbies.

I have a small "ivory tower" concern, that's all.

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Matt Ballance

Would this be something that allowing a toggle option could handle? That way, if you're open to communicating with anyone and everyone, you can enable that feature, while allowing other people that just want to communicate with their mutual followers that option as well? If that wouldn't work, perhaps adding a "second" room could solve that problem? Have one that allows open communication with anyone (like an IRC chat room) while offering another that only allows for people you're connected with. It's an interesting situation either way...

Sorry if this is a newbie question, is there a place for feature request/discussion that would be a better place for this?

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Yechiel Kalmenson

There already is a "public" room where anyone can interact, and I guess if someone wants to communicate with someone privately they can post there to request a follow, but I doubt that's ideal.

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Yechiel Kalmenson

That is true, didn't think of it from that perspective.

There should probably be a feature that lets you request chat privilege with someone who doesn't follow you.

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gmartigny profile image
Guillaume Martigny

Any thoughts on that @ben ?

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Michiel Hendriks

Only if you want to chat with them.

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Ekim Kael • Edited

The awesome thing is pair progamming.
You can just hit someone and say "hey do you want a pair programming session ?" and you're Gone.
Follow and follow back make sense now.
Good job.Respect

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Ben Halpern

Thanks! Exactly what we're thinking, and we'll try to evolve it to make this concept more powerful. Could hook into different types of file systems or runtimes in theory.

We won't get ahead of ourselves, but it's exciting.

Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible.

That Alan Kay quote is our guiding light in many ways.

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Ekim Kael • Edited

May the four be with youšŸ˜‚

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Davide Santangelo • Edited

you are late for the pusher contest šŸ˜€. Anyway awesome job!

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Kasey Speakman • Edited

This is an awesome feature!

Request: I would like to be able to dev/connect without following the other person.

Essentially, I want to be open to questions/discussions about content that I post (or whatever) via dev/connect. However, I follow very few people because I mostly want the content I see to be unfiltered. With the exception of a low-pass quality filter to de-prioritize things like buzz-word-bingo ad posts.

I'm weird in the way I use "social" features. And at times I will read pretty much anything, even about techs I'm not planning to use. To see what's going on over there or because the post has other interesting considerations that aren't familiar to me.

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Igor Moura

Kinda late to the party, but I find the mutual follow requirement to be a bit annoying. As @kspeakman said, I'm not really a fan of following many people in order to keep the content I see unfiltered, but now I feel like I have an obligation to follow back everyone because they might want to talk to me.

I'm really open to discuss anything with anyone, and, as others said, a toggle to enable chats from people that you don't follow would be perfect.

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Christian Vasquez

Is it legal to marry DEV Connect? šŸ¤”

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Ben Halpern

You only just met DEV Connect!

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Christian Vasquez • Edited

Yeah, I know... This may sound crazy, but here's my number, so call me maybe? šŸ˜‰

(sorry, it had to be done)

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Shawn Reisner

Great work! I love this idea. šŸ¤™

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Ben Halpern

Thanks!

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Amar Prakash Pandey

Awesome update, but I guess some grammatical mistake is there in this sentence(You and @ben are connected because follow each other), right?

AND

And every time we switch between diff people in dev connect, a vertical scrollbar appears and disappears which I think doesn't look good.

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Ben Halpern

Responded to the message you sent me too šŸ™‚

Thanks for heads up on all accounts

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Sung M. Kim

šŸ‘ This is a great feature Ben šŸ¤©

ā“ Where can I report an issue (should I find one?)

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Peter Kim Frank

I think in this case you should bug Ben by sending him a message directly through DEV Connect :)

And if that doesn't work, you can always ping us via yo@dev.to

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Sung M. Kim

I think in this case you should bug Ben by sending him a message directly through DEV Connect :)

šŸ¤”... šŸ§ ... šŸ’” ... šŸ’ ... šŸ˜€

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Sung M. Kim

FYI - Ah, I see a comment by Ben.

We take issues in this GitHub repo and welcome the reports. Hopefully weā€™ll have more clear on-site guidelines in the near future as well.

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Adrian B.G.

dear "connect", please stop triggering my OCD, I click this icon 100 times daily, and there are no new messages, I cannot stop! I will soon run out of battery!

Imgur

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Ahmad Awais āš”ļø

This is a noice feature. Loved the update. I suppose this is private messaging?

I hope group messaging is next :) šŸ‘

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J. Pichardo

Yeah, group messaging would be great.

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Eli Bierman

This is awesome! This is a really cool feature and I love the direction this is moving in.

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Ben Halpern

Thanks Eli!

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Ben Halpern

We take issues in this GitHub repo and welcome the reports. Hopefully weā€™ll have more clear on-site guidelines in the near future as well.

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Omar Hussain

Super! I am getting a chatrooms nostalgia :D

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Ben Halpern

In a lot of ways the internet has lost a lot of great things along the way, except you can't just go back to the days of old because things have changed. We always try to balance the wonderful things of the past with necessary advancements.

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Emmanuel Obogbaimhe

Awesome feature. That live coding feature is really helpful. Great job guys!

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J. Pichardo

Awesome feature Ben, thanks for the update.

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Ben Halpern

Thanks! Any ideas and feedback is super appreciated.

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Peter Mbanugo

Awesome!

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Ben Halpern

Thanks Peter!

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George Offley

Looks really cool. Nice job guys!

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Ben Halpern

Aww thanks! Work in progress, it will be really great in the end.

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Domitrius

Awwwwwwwwwwwwww yis. MOVES!

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Ben Halpern

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Ghost

Nice work. Simple and clean.
Look forward to using it more!

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Ben Halpern

Great chatting just now on /Connect Mike šŸ˜„

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Ghost

Thanks! Was my pleasure Ben.

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dumdumdev

This is great and I think could be very useful. Thanks!

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Adrian B.G.

Since the icon, It is related to telegram?

And how can I leave a group?

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Ben Halpern

Sorry we don't have the button for this on the UI yet, but you've been removed from the one you wanted to.

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Adrian B.G.

since the groups appear I have a bug, I have false notifications on connect icon (it says 1 or 2, I press on it, no new message exists).

I presume I was removed from the JS group but I still receive their notification.

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Yashu Mittal

I still didn't get it, how to set a message using connect?

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Nicolas Lima

Great update! Group messaging would be awesome as well

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Ben Halpern

Yep. It's on the way (well it's already technically built but joining and managing groups is not)

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Abhinav Kumar

Any plans to make it federated? Like Matrix.org or something else?

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Avalander

Awesome! I've been waiting for this since I signed up!

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Murphy Randle

Iā€™m really interested in the office hours and mentorship ideas you talked about. Both offering them and using them!

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Mahesh K

It'd be fun to have groups like say Node users get to chat together. Like programming language and tool specific chatrooms.

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Third_Thinker

Cool,I like it,which enhances interaction! We can share and chat lively in this way.Up Up Up.

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Thoby V ijishakin

Woaaa... That's dev