
Dev.to is now open source - agrinman
https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to
======
blissofbeing
I was very surprised to open the gemfile and see a gem I wrote
"s3_direct_upload" being used. Especially considering there is native support
to upload files directly to s3 in rails 5.

Then I looked at the repo and realized, wow people are still using this gem,
maybe I should maintain it.

~~~
guu
I think this is a very common experience for maintainers.

I wonder if it would make sense to have a low friction way for people to
notify maintainers that they’re using a library? I guess stars are a little
bit like that but people star stuff they don’t use.

Or maybe have something that would automatically crawl github for you and find
out how many projects depended on your library.

~~~
joombaga
> Or maybe have something that would automatically crawl github for you and
> find out how many projects depended on your library.

There's already a form of this:
[https://github.com/waynehoover/s3_direct_upload/network/depe...](https://github.com/waynehoover/s3_direct_upload/network/dependents)

~~~
yellowapple
I learn something new everyday :)

Too bad the language/manifest support seems to be so limited. I wonder if
others are in the works?

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dchuk
Not only is the content great on that site, the performance of it is
absolutely spectacular. It's amazing how much people will jump to new fangled
solutions when this site is a great example of what a well tuned Rails app can
pull off from a UX perspective.

~~~
cosmiccartel
It's cool that it's open-sourced, but I've never been impressed with the
content. Even when an article is about a topic I'm interested in, it's hard to
get past the Buzzfeed-style "How do you do, fellow kids?" tone.

~~~
luigi23
Yeah, I kinda feel the same way about the content. It's like 'coding, not
programming', 'what was your biggest achievement today? Mine was no conflicts
;)' and other silly wholesome comments. But yeah, the performance of the site
is phenomenal.

------
brlewis
"We run on a Rails backend with mostly vanilla JavaScript on the front end,
and some Preact sprinkled in. One of our goals is to move to mostly Preact for
our front end."

(what I consider the most interesting part)

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akvadrako
It isn't clear what dev.to is, so I was looking for the _About_ page. The link
is at the bottom of the page, on a site with infinite scrolling. WTF

~~~
diaz
Got the same frustration just the other day this was here. Thehack was opening
someother page and then was able to get to that link. Still don't understand
much what the site is about. It feels like an interface to a specific
subreddit.

------
agrinman
This is a very cool approach to building a developer community: let developers
contribute directly to the platform, both in code and in content.

------
ezekg
Now somebody should make a PR to get rid of the nag notification for logged
out users...

~~~
insin
This one?
[https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/pull/288](https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/pull/288)

~~~
bhalp1
Merged.

------
monksy
Just whatever you do on dev.to don't ask hard questions to their AMA people.
You'll get shadowbanned for that. (Even if the person handles the question
well)

~~~
mistersquid
By "hard" do you mean "technically difficult", "socially awkward", "directly
critical", or something else?

I've not yet commented on anything I've seen and would like to avoid irking
their mods.

~~~
monksy
Directly Critical.

------
Rjevski
It's lovely to see a sane backend language being used instead of shitty
Javascript.

~~~
ly
Instead of just dismissing all Javascript backends, can you tell me why using
Ruby is better than Javascript here?

Personally I do prefer Rails over something like Express too, but that's more
of a personal preference. I don't see why todays Javascript backends are all
"shit"?

~~~
Rjevski
One answer: left-pad.

Seriously though, the language itself is a matter of preference, but you can’t
dismiss that the ecosystem sucks. Projects with hundreds of packages in their
dependency graph seem common. I’ve worked on a (front-end) React project with
1,7k packages involved in the build process. That’s madness.

~~~
ly
I agree, left-pad was a mess, but while the huge amount of dependencies is the
thing people most complain about, is it actually unique to Javascript? Looking
at the Gemfile for this project, it seems like you're also going to have to
install hundreds of gems if you want to get this up and running.

------
flas9sd
For some time I was looking for a discovery mechanism in database topics.. so
combining the usual tags yielded already a good blog I can follow. People can
use their blog rss to crosspost, and the text contrast is friendly.

------
boling11
Awesome! Dev.to is a really nice community - I’m excited to see how this goes
:).

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Annatar
This is all great, but their Readme.md doesn’t even explain what it is — they
are just assuming that the reader knows!

~~~
somedudeatwork
To be fair, the url to the site is in the name and at the top of the repo

~~~
Annatar
But the name doesn’t tell me anything! It’s generic!

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devmunchies
Are the politics necessary?

[https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/blob/65110550d8c22...](https://github.com/thepracticaldev/dev.to/blob/65110550d8c2231f73ff99ae305a46b7b0bcb4f9/public/offline.html#L90)

~~~
Cthulhu_
Did you try hitting the edit button and submitting a PR? If only to spark the
discussion with the maintainers.

~~~
devmunchies
I don’t want my github history to show any hint of politics.

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etjsdjaha
this looks like HN for devs in their 20's

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
... HN _is_ for devs in their 20s.

~~~
ToFab123
No, it is not. I am 49 and I have no problems using HN. Also often it is
clear, that some of the amazing answer found here, are from people way older
than in the their 20s, because some of those answers requires the poster to
have many many years of experience in order to come up with that answer.

There is a great mix of young and old here :)

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Sorry; I didn't mean exclusively at all. I meant "why have a site for
20something devs when they (and everyone else) already have HN?"

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tschellenbach
Congrats guys! Great move to open source the code.

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ushi
Looks like the standard rails mess :/ Don't get me wrong. From time to time i
am going to look at other peoples rails code to learn, how they solved common
problems in grown rails apps. Most oft the time i leave rather disappointed...

I like the spec for Comment#id_code_generated ;)

~~~
meesterdude
Can you be more specific? The modeling/models don't look TOO insane - need
some refactoring, but not too far off.

If you think this is a rails mess - you haven't seen anything yet. I am still
able to hop in and reason about what this codebase does with no onboarding - a
key benefit of rails. I've worked on codebases where all those niceties were
thrown out the window.

------
debacle
What is Dev.to?

