I Built DevTrace — A Community for Developers Who Build in Public
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been building a developer platform called DevTrace:
👉 https://dev-trace.vercel.app/
DevTrace started from a simple frustration.
There are many places to show finished projects, but very few places to share the messy middle:
bugs that took hours to trace
features that worked in one place but broke elsewhere
small wins that never make it to a portfolio
I wanted a space where developers could share:
real experiences
daily progress
lessons from building, breaking, and fixing
What DevTrace Is (and Isn’t)
DevTrace is not another social network trying to be everything.
It’s focused on a few core ideas:
🧠 Experience-first posts
Share journeys, lessons, and mistakes — not just polished results.
🧩 Communities by tech & domain
Frontend, backend, open source, jobs, challenges — structured, not noisy.
🛠️ Developer-native features
Code blocks with syntax highlighting
Daily highlights (1 per user per day)
Open-source projects with stars & contributions
Job posts with auto-expiry
Follow, like, bookmark — without fake analytics
⚡ Performance and clarity
Fast load times, no clutter, no dark patterns.
What I Learned While Building It
Building DevTrace taught me a lot beyond just shipping features:
UX bugs matter as much as backend bugs
Routing, permissions, and edge cases break more things than UI
Features that “work” are useless if they don’t work everywhere
Databases should enforce truth, not the frontend
Shipping daily beats waiting for perfection
A lot of time went into fixing things users never see —
and that’s where most of the learning happened.
Why I’m Sharing This
I’m building DevTrace in public, and I want feedback from real developers.
If you:
are building side projects
enjoy sharing your dev journey
care about clean UX and real communities
I’d love for you to check it out and tell me:
what feels confusing
what feels unnecessary
what’s missing
👉 https://dev-trace.vercel.app/
What’s Next
I’m continuing to improve:
community discovery
notifications & analytics
onboarding for new users
documentation
And most importantly — listening to early users.
If you’re building something right now:
what’s one small bug that taught you a big lesson?`
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