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I built a collaborative list of resources for developers

Hi everyone! 👋

I'm so excited to share with you what I've been creating, but let me start by explaining how Dev Resources came to be.

DR started as my personal compilation of resources for development. After a few years of (messy) bookmarking, I decided it was time to put everything in one place, categorized and most importantly, available for everyone.

Since its release (October 2020), many devs have contacted me to add their own creations and favourites, increasing, even more, the number of resources.
With that said, you can already guess: DR has all the things I like and find important for software development, but it can also have what you want.

Here's a brief of what you can find there:

🛠 tools
🧩 assets
🧪 learning
👨‍💻 jobs
💰 product offers
➕ and a lot more

But you know what makes it even better?

The resources list is now open source, so everyone can contribute and be a part of it! 🤝

I hope that together we can create the biggest repository of resources for developers, so we can easily find what we need, share our creations and stay updated with new releases.

I'm planning a few more things for the next months:

📬 newsletter with trending resources, deals and updates (already on the making)
⬆️ upvoting to help amazing projects stand out
🔖 bookmarking for a more personalised experience
☎️ communication between devs and makers
🔥 and whatever else you guys find useful, after all, Dev Resources is made from us to us

I launched it on Product Hunt today, and I'd love your feedback on it. It's my first time launching something there, and I've postponed it many times, always trying to get some more things done, but I think the current state is already good enough for a launch.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think of it!

Dev Resources: https://devresourc.es
Resouces list and public API: https://github.com/marcelscruz/dev-resources
Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/dev-resources

That's it, have a nice day and enjoy Dev Resources! 🤘

  1. 2

    Congrats on getting this launched and added to the sidebar! You'll definitely be able to make some money off this project.

    Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think of it!

    I've written dozens if not hundreds of comments on IH over the past few years about learning resources and tools for solo devs and indiehackers. Much of the motivation was the site's original tagline to help each other.

    I've done my best to direct people towards the things that will increase their chances of success—lighter stacks instead of the heavier SPA front-end/low level server language/complex containerization strategy/alphabet soup of AWS services that many gravitate towards due to having seen billion dollar+ companies succeed with them.

    Specifically, I've suggested Ruby on Rails for web apps, which was overwhelmingly positively correlated with YC startup outcomes as well as what I've seen in my personal network of IHers. Again, my project is teaching Elixir, which is a competing stack, but I still recommend Rails because it works for most things and it's still a bit quicker for a newbie to ramp up with.

    So, I was a bit concerned that nearly all of these resources were JavaScript-related and that of the only two databases recommended, neither was Postgres (which is the go-to option in most cases) and neither were even a relational database! I didn't see anything Ruby related whatsoever, not even GoRails, which was a guest on the IH podcast. C, which is foundational for anyone doing systems work (or just getting deep into Unix) is also absent as far as I can tell.

    The concerning thing is these resources being pinned at the sidebar could lead a lot of newbies down a rabbit hole of making a complex front-end they don't need (but would be great for a company with a team of devs).

    The good news is that you've opened it up for people to contribute! My higher level suggestions would be to make the resources focus on IHers (since you're on pinned on the group page here) and to break the resources into some sort of categories like the following:

    • Front-end Web
    • Back-end Web
    • Desktop Native
    • Mobile Native
    • Blockchain
    • ML/AI

    Hope this is helpful and congrats again on the huge marketing win!

    1. 1

      First of all, thank you for the feedback, I love hearing what you guys think of DR, so I can improve on that, after all, it's made for you!

      Now, I completely agree with you, there are TONS of things missing there, and it's (so far) heavily based on the stack and resources I've consumed and come across.

      That's a never-ending and time-consuming task, in which I DO need help from other people. That's why I made it open source.

      I intend to add some "paths" there, so folks can more easily find what they need.

      Examples:

      • building an indie project
      • going through freeCodeCamp's curriculum
      • preparing for front-end interviews

      And even broader categories, like you mentioned, "Front-end" and "Blockchain".

      I think you get the drill.

      I'll be soon working on such things, just after I implement auth and related features, like bookmarking, upvoting, commenting, and so on, so the platform also has a more social aspect.

      Also, feel free to clone the resources repo and add your favourites, or even just sending me a list of things you find important, I'd very much appreciate your help.

      Cheers!

      1. 1

        None of the issues I saw a week and a half ago are resolved, though.

        It's hopelessly JS-centric and of the two databases listed, neither are Postgres, neither are MySql and neither are SQLite. It's Xserver and Firebase... both of which are hosted products.

        There's a plethora of paid educational sites of various sizes listed and yet, somehow Laracasts (which is both enormous and targeted at a particularly productive stack for indies) is absent. Similarly, there are zero Rails-focused resources and it's the biggest success story for small teams in the history of the web.

        I'm not really motivated to add to a resource that's pushing people so hard in a direction that I believe will hurt their chances of success. To be 100% honest, seeing it pinned on the group page makes me less interested in spending time trying to help people here (as a major portion of that effort has been directing people away from several of those resources and towards others).

        I think it's a huge win for you to get the traffic channel, but not for the newbie stumbling upon it. Maybe I'll contribute in the future if it improves and becomes better aligned with solo/small team productivity.

        1. 1

          Again, I appreciate your feedback.

          You have a point there, it does need more resources, in a way in which it can serve different audiences. That's indeed an important task, which I'll certainly spend some time on.

          At the moment my hands are full with implementing other features, but whenever possible I'll be onto this task and others that were pointed out by the community.

          1. 1

            The most important thing isn't the absolute number of resources but what people encountering the site will be encouraged to do.

            I.e., five resources that lead people in a direction that will help them are better than five hundred resources that will lead them down a path of tech stacks better suited for a large company than an indie.

  2. 1

    Looks great, it’s a very useful list, thanks for sharing. I loved the design and layout too.

    1. 1

      Thank you very much, that means a lot! 🙏

  3. 1

    Nice, I've linked it from the right hand side of the Developers group.

    Do you know of any other useful dev websites that would be useful to highlight?

    1. 1

      Laracasts. Just the free material is better than most paid courses, the lessons are indie-focused and it's gigantic.

    2. 0

      Awesome!

      I would recommend these, by knowing the quality of the projects and the nice people behind it:

      https://usehooks.com
      https://inovatik.com
      https://onepagelove.com/100-tips

      I hope these help, and please let me know if you need anything else, Rosie. :)

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