dzone is a free link-sharing community for developers

June 16, 2006 12:04 PM

Dzoneis digg for programmers and web developers.
posted by boo_radley (29 comments total)

I've been browsing through the archives now for about half an hour, and figured it was time to post it when I made a bookmark folder titled "Things from dzone".
posted by boo_radley at 12:07 PM on June 16, 2006

cool. Thanks!
posted by shoepal at 12:10 PM on June 16, 2006

Sweet, but this looks a little Java-centric. They should make one of these for .NET developers.
posted by Afroblanco at 12:18 PM on June 16, 2006

They should make one of these for .NET developers.

You mean like this?
posted by o0o0o at 12:25 PM on June 16, 2006

Seconded. Been meaning to post this as well. I've found it very useful so far.

Yes, it is pretty Java centric since it's by the guys from javalobby, but design nerds can get their CSS/Ajax on pretty regularly.

What it needs now though is more voters. I try to vote in the mornings after I cruise the homepage. A lot of that stuff makes it with only 4 or 5 votes.

I hope the formula succeeds and get used in other industry segments like .Net.
posted by butterstick at 12:27 PM on June 16, 2006

What it needs now though is more voters.

It just got one more. This site kicks ass!
posted by anomie at 12:36 PM on June 16, 2006

Minor gripe:

Is there any way to visit a link without viewing it's detail page first? Why would I want to vote for something from the front page without viewing the link first?
posted by anomie at 12:46 PM on June 16, 2006

Yes; although it's not as obvious as it should be: the little "arrow shooting out of a rectangle" icon next to the site title. Hovering over it says "visit this site directly".
posted by boo_radley at 1:00 PM on June 16, 2006

This is fantastic, cheers!
posted by twistedonion at 1:02 PM on June 16, 2006

Thanks for the links.
posted by taosbat at 1:18 PM on June 16, 2006

Looks weird in Firefox 1.5. MPUs are on top of content. Back to school!
posted by mrgrimm at 1:23 PM on June 16, 2006

That site has too much interface compared to useful text. I mean, seriously:

Handwriting Recognition in Java [plus external link]

[avatar] submitted by jeffheaton 9 hours 13 minutes ago in: java

This neural network applet demonstrates simple handwriting recognition using a Kohonen Neural Network. Draw any capital English (Roman) letter and click "Recognize". Full Java source code is available free.

1 Comment Send to a Friend Clicks: 47

9 hours 13 minutes ago, really? 47 clicks? What useful information. And why have the links set up like that?

And that's before you take into account the full-on navigation assault on the top and the right. It's like reading on of those terrible 'network' blogs where the actual text takes like 10% of the page. Makes me sad. That is all.
posted by reklaw at 1:37 PM on June 16, 2006

Interesting enough to bookmark and revisit. So cheers. There is more..
posted by econous at 2:12 PM on June 16, 2006

A mere 2 pages of stuff on C++? I am highly dissapointed, but then again nobody seems to care about C++ anymore :'(
posted by public at 2:20 PM on June 16, 2006

no love for fridays.
posted by 3.2.3 at 2:27 PM on June 16, 2006

Only one TCL article?! Actually, that's one more than I expected, someday's I think that I'm the only tcl developer left.
posted by octothorpe at 2:37 PM on June 16, 2006

A pure TCL developer? Really?
posted by boo_radley at 2:41 PM on June 16, 2006

Wow, I had no idea java 1.6 was already in beta. Sounds like they have some pretty sweet features (like accessing javac from your code. OMG)
posted by delmoi at 2:45 PM on June 16, 2006

I agree with reklaw. The layout totally made me want to run away.
posted by ddf at 2:46 PM on June 16, 2006

Dzone is digg for programmers and web developers.

Huh, I still haven't figured out who digg is for.
posted by Outlawyr at 2:56 PM on June 16, 2006

A pure TCL developer? Really?

Yea, pretty much. It wouldn't have been my first choice, (or my second, third or fourth) but that's what we use here so that's what I code in. It's not a terrible language but I'd much rather be working in Python or Java or Ruby.
posted by octothorpe at 3:01 PM on June 16, 2006

Outlawyr: digg is linkfilter for AOL.
posted by boo_radley at 3:03 PM on June 16, 2006

Hey, at least you know it's really a developer-built community. Bad UI overwhelmed by information.
posted by yerfatma at 3:19 PM on June 16, 2006

Which didn't stop me from subscribing.
posted by yerfatma at 3:20 PM on June 16, 2006

That's pretty nifty. Thanks.

digg like sites seem to be the current fashion. It will be interesting to see what other ones take off.
posted by sien at 3:41 PM on June 16, 2006

A mere 2 pages of stuff on C++? I am highly dissapointed, but then again nobody seems to care about C++ anymore :'(

I'm with you on that one. We need more C++ lovin'! Java is so metrosexual.
posted by Meridian at 6:18 PM on June 16, 2006

For examples of how not to code, there's The Daily WTF.
posted by Bort at 3:22 AM on June 17, 2006

First, on behalf of the team behind dzone.com, I'd like to thank boo_radly for starting this discussion and all of you for participating. It's really rich feedback, and we genuinely value and appreciate it. Our new site is just a baby, really only operating for the general public for about 10 days now, and there's a LOT of room to improve it. We are working on it very actively.

Second, I'd like to respond to some of the points:

1. - Too much Java focus: This is probably a by-product of where we are able to spread the word. Our reach in the Java community is much broader than our reach intot he world of developers as a whole.

Rest assured that we EAGERLY hope for more of you to post non-Java stories into the queue. We have no desire for dzone.com to be biased towards any technology or platform. It is truly open to all. Bring it on, more is better!

2 - Visiting a site directly: As mentioned above, all you have to do is click the little arrow icon just to the right of the link, and you'll get to the site directly. If users would like it, perhaps we could add support for direct clicking as a preference item for logged-in users. We like providing options.

3 - Bad UI overwhelmed by information: Thank you for being honest, we are not afraid to hear criticism, and we're wide open to any suggested improvements. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the fact that dzone.com is built entirely on a service layer, and we'll be releasing an SDK and complete api documentation as soon as we can make them presentable.

In other words, the current site is just one lens onto the underlying data and services. We'll do everything we can to make it easy for developerrs to leverage those services to make other interesting "lenses" in this sense. Support for more richly interactive expressions would be great, and we'd also love to see gadgets and widgets created for the likes of Google, Yahoo and WIndows Live.

We may even have a contest with some nice prizes. We're working on ideas.

Once again, I really want to thank all of you for engaging in this discussion, and I hope your feedback will help us deliver you a service that you can really enjoy and consider useful over the long term.

Please post ANY and ALL developer-focused stories that interest you. Help us overcome the unintended Java dominance.

Please VOTE, VOTE, VOTE!!! Social filtering works, but only if you vote.

Best regards to all,
Rick Ross
DeveloperZone, Inc.
posted by dzone at 8:21 AM on June 17, 2006 [1 favorite]

dzone.com is built entirely on a service layer, and we'll be releasing an SDK and complete api documentation as soon as we can make them presentable. In other words, the current site is just one lens onto the underlying data and services.

Thank you. But that's the developer perspective I'm complaining about. Your audience builds stuff 40+ hours a week. No one (in the figurative sense) is going to consume that API; either give us a usable interface or we'll move on to the next snippets community.
posted by yerfatma at 9:19 PM on June 17, 2006