It seems every week a new app or website pops up in the Steemit ecosphere. Looking at the #steemdev tag there's always some announcements or updates of a bunch of Steem apps, and just looking at the plethora of projects listed on steemtools.com makes me dizzy.
So where do all these apps come from? They are made by Steemians, of course!
Coders on steemit
For the past weeks I've been actively curating and commenting on posts in the #steemdev and #programming tags, and I see a lot of potential there. From experienced coders to newbies who are just starting to learn how to program – and every level in between – people are writing tutorials, coding challenges, questions and answers about the languages they work with and more.
I try to engage with as many good posts in these tags as I can. Partly because they are the subjects I'm interested in the most, but also to encourage developers to keep writing about their passion. The more people write about code, the more other people can read those posts and increase their own coding skills. Because here's an interesting thought:
The best Steem app hasn't been made yet
Who knows how long Steem will be around, what kind of features will be added or removed, and what kind of interesting data can be accumulated from that? We've just started, and we've got a whole future ahead of us. Looking at the current trend, this can only mean that more and more Steem-related apps will be developed. Again, by Steemians. But here's another shocker:
The developer of the best Steem app may not even know how to program yet
Yup. Maybe some guy or gal reading their first programming tutorial on Steemit today will turn out to create the greatest Steem app next year. And even if we forget about something being the best app for a moment, there will be lots of great apps in the years to come that all provide a different kind of service to us Steemians. It's very probably that 99% of those apps have yet to be written. So let's make sure we do everything possible to make that happen.
How do we encourage developers?
This is a question I ask myself regularly, and now I'm asking you too. Let's get a discussion going about what we can do to get the best out of our community and encourage people to write that next great Steem tool.
Curation
One possible answer is quite straightforward: encourage them. Upvote their articles, resteem them if they're very good, but also leave comments to show your appreciation, ask questions about their projects and provide feedback where applicable. Make sure that those who already know a programming language (or more) feel welcome here, and that people who want to learn how to develop a Steem app can find the resources they need.
@transisto has been doing a great job curating the #steemdev tag, regularly upvoting promising blog posts with an upvote worth over $40. If that doesn't encourage people to write about Steem development I don't know what does. But lately he's been a little less active, and I see a lot of great posts gather only a handful of upvotes and just a few cents. We can't rely on just one person to keep developers engaged. We all have a responsibility to keep programmers around and encourage them to share their knowledge.
Tutorials
Another answer could be writing more tutorials, to make sure anyone who runs into a problem when developing for Steem can find the answers they need. @jfollas is a great example of someone diving deep into the mechanics of Steem and sharing his findings with the community. His posts have saved me and many other developer hours of digging through documentation to make stuff work.
...and more
And of course there's plenty of other ways to facilitate a healthy developer community. Channels on steemit.chat like #programming, #dev and #steemjs where questions can be asked, tools like SteemJS, Piston, SteemSQL and SteemData that facilitate developers in building their apps with more ease, et cetera.
All those things already exist and serve their purpose, but maybe there are more ways to facilitate and encourage aspiring Steem developers. Do you have any ideas? What do you think can be done to help grow the Steem ecosystem to maturity?
@pilcrow, i just joined Steemit as a programmer. This may sound unbelievable but I still didn't find an answer to the first question "Which is the best programming language to make an app that interacts with the Steem blockchain?" In what language are all these steemtool apps written? Cheers
Most seem to be written in either JavaScript (using SteemJS) or Python (using Piston). There's some tools in other languages, but I don't know much about them.
I've been using Steem for Python (pip install steem) and steem-js & dsteem - while the last of those is the newest.
The one reason Ethereum is so valuable is the huge amount of teams and developers that are building on it. One reason they attracted so many is that with ICO's they had good shot to get funded.
Here the situation isn't the worse but it could be better. We need to attract as many devs as we possibly can and keep them to make Steem able to compete with the biggest of blockchains in the top 5.
I always see your upvotes on my posts - really appreciate that!
For me the motivation to create scripts have multiple sources:
1.) To make my life easier (e.g. seeing VotingPower% in status bar and not missing when reaching 100%) or to customize open source projects (FOSS Bot etc.)
2.) As a way to give back to the community with valuable posts instead of justing posting for the sake of pasting.
3.) To get more experience. Even though I've been programming for nearly 8 years now -I haven't done much in the last few years. But doing something that is useful for me and others - what better way is there to learn?
4.) And last but not least - of course to earn some revenue. But again - by contributing value!
All in all - much of this is intrinsic motivation - but it def. helps to get upvotes and love from the community! :)
Thanks, glad to hear you already have so much intrinsic motivation to work on steemit apps!
Definitely agree. More basic but in depth usage tutorials. More basic apps. Like they are overlooking the simple things. Like easier user communication and notifications. The truly useful ones should be adopted by the system and not necessarily an add on. Lots of people might not know half the apps even exist or are being worked on including myself.
And definitely encouragement. I think pooled together donations should be put towards the winner of the app competition.
I started something along those lines here not to long ago. Not any success yet but ill keep trying.
https://steemit.com/pocket/@jnjmarketing/lets-get-a-pocket-wallet-going
The idea is take donations and 100% of the post payouts and pool it into 1 fund. Then whoever creates the best wallet wins 100% of the $. They can put their name as creator, get paid possibly well, and everyone involved together win by growing the overall steemit value. An idea. Im not a whale and im only 31 days old so not much of a following. But im gonna keep at it and hopefully meet some awesome people along the way. Already have!! Great post. Keep it up!
I would love to see more whale votes for the devs!
It's amazing how many talented devs we have here. As a relative noob, I get so excited to see all of this. I will be following the topic and will keep resteeming!
Someday, my vote will make a difference!
Your vote already makes a difference. It may be a small one, but every time you upvote someone they will feel appreciated. Many small upvotes can add up to substantial rewards.
That's true!
Thanks for the encouragement!
Nice ideas, why aren't you writing directly to devs? ;-)
Thanks! What do you mean exactly by "writing directly to devs"?
I've always wanted where I could get all steem tools in one place and you just handed it over to me without troubles :)
Thanks a lot ✌️
Heh, you're welcome. It's nice to see an overview of all the different tools, and seeing how many there are already really makes me wonder what that list will look like a few years from now.
That's the beauty of a decentralised platform. By then we may need a search engine just to go through the tools :)
A bit late to the party, but still;
You can also join to make Steemit itself better, check out this post; https://steemit.com/condenser/@timcliff/calling-community-developers-let-s-polish-the-steemit-com-mothership
Yeah, that's a great addition. I made my first pull request to Condenser last week, I'll write a post about it once it's merged. Thanks for the reply!
Maybe one could gather a dedicated group of users who were dedicated to actually using the products created by the new developers, giving the developers the feedback and actually creating content. That would reduce the chances of great products getting shut down due to potential poor marketing.
A single developer with a great product may not have the skills or the time to market the product properly. So having a group of users that's easy to reach out to, and that are dedicated to spending some time with the product, might be a good idea.
Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. The earlier in the process developers will join such a group, the sooner they will get feedback about their ideas, maybe something similar had already been done that they can borrow ideas from or decide to join that project instead.
It could be as simple as a steemit.chat or discord channel where people can discuss their apps at first. That shouldn't be too hard to set up and find a handful of developers to get it started :)
Yeah, that sounds like a good place to start.
I agree that the best Steem app hasn't been made yet. I have this feeling that since I registered (only 2 months ago), the amount of apps announced has risen. Maybe it's just due to me looking more into them than at the beginning but it sure feels like it. I'm excited to see what people will make with Steem, only time will tell !
Thanks for recommending @jfollas by the way, didn't know about him at all. His blog will come very handy for my project !
Awesome, may I ask what kind of app you're building?
You couldn't have picked a better time to ask, just posted about it lol. It's a game jam related to Steem. Click here if you want to learn more ;)
Nice, I'll check it out!
Thanks ! If you have any positive or negative feedback, be sure to be as honest as possible. I don't get hurt easily ^^
This post has received a 1.04 % upvote from @drotto thanks to: @banjo.
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STOPHi @pilcrow, I have not seen your posts for a long time, what happened.
I was reading the code of steemit, a deep research. Now I posted an infographic about the reward system. I want your opinion, because I know you understand this system very well. Regards.