Ask away, I'd love to share! â¤ï¸
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Ask away, I'd love to share! â¤ï¸
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
francheese9289 -
Rasheed K Mozaffar -
dev.to staff -
OpenSource -
Oldest comments (112)
Who designed the sweet logo?
I did, and thanks!
I really like 70s computer aesthetic
So the design is sort of an homage to that. Sometimes we get busy just doing stuff, and don't have time and energy to stick to the the original vision for some stuff. @jess does a great job of keeping track of the vision in subtle ways we can lose track of when we're busy.
Do you plan to a release a "dev.to" font pack?
After reading so much content over the year (since dev.to was created), what, in your opinion, makes for a good technical blog post? What are the characteristics of strong technical writing? Are there any patterns or themes that you've seen emerge in the blog posts that you've enjoyed the most or learn a lot from?
Firstly, I think variety in styles and goals is ideal, so characteristics can vary, but here are a few thoughts:
I'm really not sure I expressed everything perfectly here, but that's what comes to mind. Thanks for the great question.
I see Dev.to mostly publishing technical posts (frameworks, concepts, techniques, etc.), but I've also seen a few of the "Programmer Life" type posts (burnout, mentoring, etc.).
Is there a particular mix of the two you're looking for? Do you want the submissions to be heavier on the technical or is it more dependent on what the community is offering?
I ask as a not entirely disinterested party - if it's the sort of thing you'd like to see, I'd like to submit a more tightly written summation of a blog series I recently started.
Think of the audience as programmers (as opposed to "tech" like startups and venture capitalists and that sort of thing) but otherwise posts do not really have to be technical at all as long as they might help someone. I wrote a post about fitness which really didn't have anything to do with code, but was directed at programmers and the things we deal with in our careers/life.
So I'd say the technical/non-tech isn't as important as knowing the audience. If you are an experienced programmer with a story to tell, it's definitely appropriate. Just use titles that express the value of the post.
Why did you feel the need to create this platform? A side project which has gotten out of hand?
It's sort of like a best-case-scenario for a side project. Everything was pretty deliberate when the choice was made, but I wouldn't say it was all seen in advance.
What are your goals for dev.to?
What motivated you to start this site?
The motivations of the site became more concrete over time. Early on it really was "I want to make something I'd be happy to work on even if it took ten years". As certain things worked, it became clear I could solve problems more fundamental to my own life as a developer and the problems the community faces as a whole. I wouldn't say we've even scratched the service on providing a true solution, but that's certainly what motivates me every day.
What are your dev tools of choice? What does your desk look like?
I don't use a lot of personal dev tools. I have my editor, VS Code, and that's about it on personal tools really. I use and like git standup and as a team we rely on some collab tools and monitoring tools.
dev.to stack
I want to find more good tools, but my brain can't handle too many different things, so I'm a very slow adopter of tools. Usually I have to see someone using something for a while before trying it myself, just because I won't have the patience to learn the ins and outs on my own unless it's critical.
As for my desktop:
bro you gotta get a mechanical keyboard 🤓
🙃
How'd you get into programming?
My first experience with programming was my friend Mike Wright making a website on Geocities for his band when we were in junior high. I didn't have a useful computer at the time so I came to his house to work on websites, like, every day.
After that, it was a windy path in and out of computering before I got into it for good after graduating college with a marketing degree.
Anything you miss in particular about Canada?
Biggest achievement so far?
Whats the roadmap for Dev.to? What features you are looking to implement and bugs or things that should change?
We're working hard on polishing our moderation features under the hood and a hiring tag, which will help keep the lights on 💸💸💸
Otherwise we're working to get the platform open source, where the bugs and features can be dealt with more in the open. We have a long list of things to do, but we're going to take care of it in the open.
Hi Ben, dev.to has a massive community (127K on twitter!) - congrats.
How did you generate the initial following and start to build a network? What was the seed that got it all growing and what has been your most successful growth tactic to date?
My main key was to allow the project to take forever to grow. I said I'd be okay if it took 10 years and worked on it very gradually. I observed what worked and what did not and put myself into it.
Huge growth moments were the jokes and working hard to be myself. I'm a real weirdo and before I got into software, I thought I wanted to get into sitcom writing. I knew I had an interesting on a lot of things in this industry, so I didn't hold back!
These days, since I love writing code, I've been putting most of my effort into writing features that can augment the voices of the rest of the community, especially underrepresented groups.
Have recently joined the dev.to community and it's great! I just wanted to ask how you've gone about building such a community? What have your biggest challenges been in this process?
For whatever reason, this is the sort of thing I've been building or taking part in my whole life. Online communities have been such a big part of my life but I think there's a lot missing from the current space. So I felt like I had a lot of insight and motivation, the rest was drumming up interest on the Internet.
A community is essentially a multi-sided marketplace with supply and demand economics and serious chicken and egg problems. So key was to start with an offering that didn't rely on the network effect and only lean on that once the overall demand was high enough. Things started out as only the @thepracticaldev Twitter account, and a lot of work in bringing value until it was time to move more in the community direction. We're still petal-to-the-metal on growing to avoid the tide of irrelevancy. There is no space for being complacent.
Where/What do you hope to see dev.to && The Pratical Dev grow to be?
We want to be that resource that's by your side as you grow as a developer. All our careers are a sequence of crossing different chasms and it can be a scary place. Everyone deals with some insecurity about the paths they choose, and we hope to facilitate the "I have no idea what I'm doing" gap.
We've made it when I feel like people can seriously lean on the tool and we can feel like we're really there whenever you need us to be. Us as in the community or tool, or however you want to describe it.
From there I have some far out ideas about what could be done with a community of all the world's developers working together to solve hard problems. There are a lot of steps to take between now and right now we're five people working out of a single room, so I don't get too deep into those crazy dreams, yet.
If you were to start dev.to from scratch again, how would you do it differently?
What's one of the hardest lessons you learned prior to your success with TPD? Or even during... :)
Patience! Before starting this whole project, I let my own projects come and go too quickly. Before starting The Practical Dev, I told myself I'd have to pick something that I'd still be willing to commit to even if success took ten years.
I still haven't found "that" project yet :)
I'd look for something super low key and maintainable. Something that delivers actual value to, like, 10 people now and not theoretical value to 1,000,000 people in three years and with $15m in funding. Simple, maintainable projects with room enough to grow out to be complicated beasts.
For the record, this project has become a complicated beast, but it happened naturally.
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