How was my journey building an open source project?

#opensource #webdev #react #frontend

Hello there! My name is Sidi and I am a 19-year-old guy from Mauritania. As a frontend developer, I am always looking to improve my skills in programming and design. I believe that the combination of these two things is what makes a great website or application.

I have always had a love for technology, especially video games. When I was a kid, I spent hours exploring new games and discovering new worlds and locations. I was a big fan of games like GTAV and God Of War. I started to join WhatsApp groups related to video games. These groups were a great way for me to connect with other gamers and share my experiences.

However, after a while, I started to explore other areas of technology. I remember joining groups related to tech stuff and seeing people share their blog posts about programming. This intrigued me, and I decided to start my own blog where, I was able to build relationships with other members and even make some friends who built mobile apps. I contacted them and they gave me an introduction to programming.

At first, I was interested in all aspects of programming, but I soon realized that frontend development was what I enjoyed most. Unfortunately, at that time, I did not have a laptop, so I started learning from my phone. It was a challenging experience, but also a wonderful and interesting time for me.

Learning

When I began learning frontend development, I started with a book on HTML and CSS. It was an exciting journey, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I followed the book step by step and applied what I learned in a simple code editor on my phone. Additionally, I watched tutorials on YouTube, which helped me grasp the concepts better.

A year later, I finally bought my first laptop, which opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. As I continued to learn, I found myself building cool things like forms, search boxes. Every time I learned something new, I would try to implement it in my projects. I started learning new technologies, building websites on my own, and even began freelancing.

One of the most exciting projects I worked on during this time was Float UI, my side project. It started as a way to improve my frontend development skills and showcase my portfolio to potential clients. However, as I continued to work on it, I realized that it had the potential to be something much bigger.

How Float UI was created

First of all, what is Float UI? It's a collection of UI components and website templates that can be used to build web apps faster than starting from scratch. Simply copy and paste what you need from Float UI into your code editor and customize it to fit your needs.

I created Float UI as a side project to improve my skills and showcase my portfolio. Since its creation, more people have come to know me and have thanked me for building it. I have received job offers and long-term freelancing work, but I have rejected them all because I want to invest my time in improving Float UI and making it the best it can be. I also want to work on something I love and am comfortable with.

Initially, I created a premium user interface kit for React.js with the goal of helping developers make their apps more beautiful using my modern Tailwind UI component library.

Then, I met John on Twitter...

When I met John

During our conversations with John Rush, the Founder of MarsX, I was struck by the company's vision. I was so inspired by the vision that I felt compelled to join MarsX's mission. Our decision to merge our projects was a natural next step, driven by our shared desire to make software development more productive and effective.

One of the key tenets of MarsX's vision is that most code needs to be free and open source. In line with this philosophy, we decided to make Float UI, which is an integral part of our project, free and open source as well. This move would make Float UI accessible to anyone in the world with no limitations on usage. We believe that this will help to democratize software development and foster innovation. It is also a statement of our commitment to the open-source community.

What happened?

Float UI serves as the foundation for MarsX's UI library microapp, powering the UI for all other microapps in the MarsX ecosystem.

Our goal for Float UI, as a standalone open-source project, is to use MarsAI to auto-generate versions of Float UI for every popular framework in use today. Moreover, thousands of MarsX contributors and developers will be updating Float UI daily. Our aim is to make Float UI the most complete and advanced Tailwind application UI library in the world.

It took us almost a month to make Float UI completely free and open source. To launch it on Product Hunt, which was challenging since we had never done it before, we enlisted the help of John and especially Alex Isora, who assisted us in preparing everything for the launch, including creating a video, copy, and images. We launched on a pre-planned Friday.

Our traffic boomed, and we won second place that day! Check out our page: https://www.producthunt.com/products/float-ui#float-ui.

Due to our hard work on the product, I received a lot of messages and mentions in listings and articles. As developers, we know that you can't "sell" bullshit!

What about me?

Since our launch a few months ago, the Float UI team has been hard at work to continuously improve the product. We have been working on a range of new features, including enhancing user experience, implementing new design patterns, and optimizing the codebase.

As the CEO of Float UI, my role has shifted from being heavily involved in the coding process to focusing more on the overall product vision. I now spend a significant amount of time gathering feedback from our users and stakeholders, and prioritizing new features that align with our vision. In addition, I am actively engaging with startup founders to encourage them to adopt Float UI and its companion product, MarsX, which offers a range of powerful tools to help startups grow and scale.

I believe that by staying focused on our vision and continuing to innovate, we can make Float UI the go-to platform for developers and entrepreneurs alike.

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