I've been thinking about something lately and I'd love to hear what you all think.
DEV is full of people who build things: indie hackers, open source maintainers, people launching startups and side projects. But when it's time to actually launch something, most of us go somewhere else..
The idea
What if DEV had a launch system built in?
- π Schedule your launch for a specific day
- β¬οΈ Upvote: the community votes on launches they like
- π¬ Discuss: feedback, questions and replies in one place
- π See everything together: launches show up in one list, so they don't get lost in the feed
Why
Right now, the closest thing we have is a Show DEV post. That's great for sharing a project, but there's no launch day, no scheduling, no voting, and no single place to see what people are launching.
I think this would be really useful for startups and open source builders, because the audience they want to reach (developers) is already here.
But maybe it's a bad idea
It could turn DEV into an ad board, or people might just start begging for upvotes. I'm honestly not sure.
So I'd like to know
- Would you launch your project on DEV if this existed?
- Would you use it to discover new tools and projects?
- Do you think it would help the community, or ruin the vibe?
Founders, builders, community folks, anyone: tell me what you think. Even "bad idea" is a useful answer, just tell me why. π
@jess @ben @hadil @nyaomaru @heyitsjem @francistrdev @maame-codes @peter @thomasbnt @georgekobaidze
Top comments (27)
Hey @nyaomaru and @hanzla! Keep in mind that I found this post manually. I wasn't notified even though you did. I made a PR in hope that will fix the issue.
Going back on topic, that seems like a great idea to have and would make sense to have a separate section. I would recommend making it as a Feature Request on the Forem Repository and letting others know. This seems like an ambitious project to where @ben needs to review and make sure if this can be integrated on dev.to.
Otherwise, great ideas guys :D
Thanks for checking the post manually and for making a PR to fix the notification issue! Really appreciate it. And thanks for sharing your thoughts on the idea too. I agree that a separate section would make more sense. I'll look into submitting a feature request on the Forem repository and see how the community responds. It would be great to get Ben's thoughts on whether something like this could be integrated into DEV. Thanks again! π
Thank you, Francis! πΈπ
I saw your PR too. Nice contribution!! Really appreciate you jumping in to help fix the notification issue. π
And yes, I hope we can make this idea happen in some form, whether inside DEV or as a separate experience.
It would be really interesting to see where the discussion goes! π
This is a really interesting idea! πΈπ
I actually love seeing people launch things on DEV.
#showdevis one of my favorite tags here, and I check it pretty often because we can find some really fun and unexpected projects there. πAt the same time, I do feel like some great projects disappear into the feed way too quickly.
So I totally understand why a proper launch system sounds appealing! π
But Iβm a little worried about adding things like upvotes and rankings directly into DEV too. πΏ
Once people start competing for votes, we might get more repeated promotion, vote chasing, and βplease support my launch!β posts.
And personally, I really like that DEV is not just about launching products.
Itβs a place for tutorials, silly experiments, deep technical posts, career stories, discussions, OSS, random discoveries, and even introducing your pets. πΈπ
So I think Iβd probably keep the actual launch system separate, while still using DEV articles to tell the story behind a launch. πΈ
And actually, when I read this post, my heart skipped a beat a little. πΉ
Because Iβve secretly been building something pretty close to this idea!
Itβs a platform where people can share OSS projects, discover new ones through a bit of exploration and adventure, and eventually launch their own projects too. ππ
Iβm hoping to release it as a
Necozproject in the future!Itβs still very much under construction, and I probably need another month or two just to get the foundation into a shape Iβm happy with. πΉ
But we definitely want to keep building it.
So, stay tuned! πΈπ
And when the time comes, Iβd really love to hear everyoneβs ideas about what would make a developer-focused launch and discovery platform actually fun to use. π
@nyaomaru bro my comment invisible π₯
Hmm, thatβs strange. πΏ
It might be something on DEVβs side, maybe moderation or a visibility issue.
Could you send me the link to the comment that became invisible? Iβll check whether I can see it from my side too! π
BTW, my comment also isn't shown... And maybe my notification is crashing now. π€
I received the comments here in my notification page but not showing under post
And Bro, you liked the comment, I didn't get a notification.π€
Iβve been facing similar issues for the past few days as well.
Very frustrating π
Report it in Forem, the open-source GitHub repository behind DEV.to.
I tried fetching the comments directly through the API, and it works! π
So it looks like the comments are stored on the server, but something might be going wrong with how the page fetches or displays them. π€
If I have some free time tomorrow, I'll dig into it a little more! πΈπ
Bro, you both are genius and meπ
Haha, I went to sleep and it was fixed when I woke up!
Maybe sleeping is an effective debugging strategy after all. πΉ
Jokes aside, since the comments were still available through the API, my guess is that some caching layer may have gotten out of sync, possibly on the Fastly side or somewhere in the Rails app.
At least it seems to be working normally again now! πΈ
Comments are showing now! Feel free to share your thoughts again. Would love to hear them! π
Yes..! Facing same issue
You nailed the exact trade-off here, @nyaomaru. A public upvote leaderboard directly inside DEV would quickly change the incentives from sharing engineering stories to gaming rankings and farming votes. Keeping DEV focused on the technical journey while having a dedicated space built specifically around OSS exploration and project discovery makes way more sense. That secret
Necozproject sounds awesome, and I am really looking forward to seeing how you shape the foundation over the next couple of months! ππΈThank you, John! πΈπ
Thatβs exactly the balance Iβm hoping to keep too.
DEV is such a good place for sharing the story, the lessons, and the thinking behind a project, while the new Necoz project can focus more on exploration, discovery, and launching itself. ππ
And Iβm really happy to be shaping that foundation with you around. Letβs build something fun together over the next couple of months! π
A launch system on DEV is definitely a good idea, and I agree with your point too. People might start competing just to get more upvotes, creating multiple accounts for fake engagement or trying other tricks, which would take away from what the platform is supposed to be.
Looking forward to your project as well. Excited to see what you come up with!
By the way, can I tell you something? π I'm actually working on something quite similar for my own organization, The Startup CafΓ© and it's bit similar to dev.to
Oh, really? πΈ That sounds awesome!
Iβd definitely love to see it once it starts coming together. π
Actually, Iβm part of The Startup CafΓ© too! πΉ
I havenβt really been able to contribute anything yet though.
So now Iβm even more curious to see what youβre building there.
Please show me when youβre ready! π
Haha, I'll definitely show you when there's something to see! πΉ I'm working on it all by myself for now, so it'll probably take a little time. Could be a few days, a week, or maybe even a month. Let's see! π
And hey, you're always welcome at The Startup CafΓ©! Really glad to have you as part of the community. β€οΈ Hope we get to do some fun things together there! β
That definitely is an interesting idea. Showdev posts work great, but the only difference between that and normal posts is the tag.
Having a dedicate space for product launches can be really useful and boost the potential viewers count.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! That's exactly what I had in mind. A dedicated space could make launches easier to discover instead of getting lost in the regular feed. Really appreciate your input! π
Clean architecture is easy to maintain in a slide deck; the real test is how gracefully the system degrades under cascading production failures.
Minimizing abstraction layers and owning your critical runtime path will always outperform adding more third-party glue.
That's a really good point! Keeping things simple and having control over the core system matters a lot, especially as the platform grows.
Great idea! ππ»