Part of a developer community
Despite our slightly misanthropic nature, most developers thrive on learning and sharing, and having a community of similarly minded developers to tap is a good way to do that. Below is an example of one such community and some of the various products and services I’ve learned about through it. I hope everyone is keeping well.
Hashnode
Hashnode is a free developer blogging platform that allows you to publish articles on your own domain and helps you stay connected with a global developer community. If you read many tech articles, it is possible that you’ve come across Hashnode before. Similar to dev.to it is a community of developers allowing you to host free blogs. They also run month-long hackathons requiring the use of particular libraries or platforms. It is through these that I have come across the other links in this issue. I’m guessing it is via these competitions that they make their money in sponsorship. Because otherwise I don’t see an obvious business model. But free is free.
Clerk
Authentication and user management for developers that’s simple, secure, and scalable with any platform or language. Try it free! For this month (July), there is a hackathon happening at Hashnode to build an open source app using Clerk for your auth and user management. Given that is usually a tedious and non-core part of most apps, using a service like this makes sense, particularly in the beginning. Free for up to 10,000 active users.
HarperDB
HarperDB is a SQL/NoSQL data management platform. It is fully indexed, doesn’t duplicate data, and runs on any device- from the edge to the cloud. This was the focus of the previous Hashnode hackathon. A database which allows for schema-less use, but also provides the familiarity of SQL for those who want that. You can get 1GB for free as part of the HarperDB Cloud offering.