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🙈Roast my new project: DevTools Directory

For years, I've complained that there wasn't a central location for developers to get a view of tools available to us. If I wanted/needed a CMS, I would have to Google and try to come across the right article. And don't even think about if I needed a CMS for a specific language outside of PHP.

I was having a conversation with a friend about JS Static Site Generators and that was the last straw. I gave myself one month to design and develop the project so that I wouldn't procrastinate and here we have it...DevTools Directory.

https://devtools.directory
  • Is there anything missing?
  • Is there anything that you would like to see differently?
  • Is it too minimal?
Any advice/tips/etc would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,

Douglas Rogers


It's not that useful currently, and too minimal - "No Results Found" - I'd rather google 'site:github.com awesome cms ruby', which gives me github.com/postlight/awesome-… + github.com/markets/awesome-ru…, which seem super comprehensive.

If you get more stuff, maybe - but it's an SEO / traffic game. If I were to use it, I'd suggest adding examples to each (projects using it, screenshots), plus ability to filter by offering type - commercial or not.

Thank you for the insight.

That's actually the goal. "Resources" will provide articles, tutorials, etc. for the tool you pick. You'll be able to filter by open source or commercial, and I will provide screenshots to certain tools (CMSs, Form handlers, etc) where I can.

I get what you're saying about the "No Results Found" and intend to address that. More content will definitely help in that case but given that I got this up and running in under 4 weeks, it's difficult to pool enough to fulfill each filter.

I'm not sure what problem you're trying to solve. Could you verbalize this?

If it's about helping me find dev tools that solve my problem, you're basically competing with Google and all the other curated collections it can search through (such as the Awesome lists, mentioned by @russ). I really think that's an uphill battle you don't want to fight.

My advice would be to figure out what Google/etc isn't solving for you, and then build a product that addresses that. Right now it feels very unfocused and a bit like "a jack of all trades, master of none" if that makes sense.

One thing Google isn't as good at is discovery. When you don't exactly know what you're searching for.

I think the Awesome lists are good at that, but they aren't necessarily the best interface. If you were to target a specific niche (e.g. "TDD for Ruby" or "Tools for static sites") and do a weekly email etc with new tools/etc I think that might be a better starting point.

A challenge that I've faced several times when starting a new website is finding certain tools. The goal of DevTools Directory is to provide a central location for all development tools with a way to filter by language, type and/or license. There are a few missteps in the current iteration but the core of the idea is there.

The lists that @russ mentioned are new to me and definitely make #dtd kind of obsolete (lol).

You suggest to niche down even further than developers into languages, frameworks, etc?

Yeah I think "developer tools" is very broad. When I looked at the section that's relevant to me (Ruby) I saw only 3 tools, which isn't very compelling. I think it would be very hard to create a collection for dozens of categories. Better to focus on one category first and do it right. Then expand from there.

The site that I use the most is libhunt.com. They have a decent interface and do a lot of analysis to determine the state of the library or tool.

You might be able to compete with libhunt.com if you simplify the interface, and provide both library/tool and SaaS grades.

I'm mostly concerned about three things when picking a library/tool or SaaS product. Is it popular in the community? Are there plenty of resources and documentation? Is it still alive and kicking?

Maybe you could create some type of DevTools (r) number that is essentially a rotten-tomatoes-like score that grades these products on those three key areas?

I love the idea of a Rotten Tomato approach. Originally, I was just going to have the tools that I've used personally and grade them personally. But I realized how difficult that would be to scale. It could help me to expand my territory in development by adding more skills (example: diving into Ruby, Java or Go and writing articles about tools in in those languages).

Libhunt is massive!! They have so many topics.

Congratulations on your project! First of all I would like to ask how are you planning to keep the list of tools up-to-date?