[News] Handmade Network's Future

Ryan Fleury

July 2, 2018

Hello, World!

Introduction

I'm Ryan Fleury, though some of you probably know me by my online alias "Delix". As Handmade Network founder Abner Coimbre had mentioned last month, the site's new technical staff and myself will be taking the reins of Handmade Network from here on out, which is an opportunity that I couldn't be more grateful to have. Handmade Network has had, and continues to have, a massive effect on me as a programmer, and I hope to do everything I can (alongside the rest of the team) to continue to allow this community to prosper to ensure that it continues to have the same effect on others.

For this monthly news post, I wanted to briefly summarize what the team and I have been discussing will be the direction of Handmade Network moving forward. Additionally, I have some other exciting news to share with you all.

The Network's Direction

The team has agreed that a significant portion of Handmade Network's value is in the fact that it provides a self-improving community. There is an abundance of knowledge and experience among Handmade Network's users, but unfortunately, as it stands right now, it can be very difficult to directly access said knowledge and experience. One might find themselves digging through a forum thread, searching through a set of projects to find a Handmade library, or if they are lucky, using Miblo's amazing annotation system to find a bit of content in a stream recording. The implementation of the wiki was certainly a step in the right direction, but we think that we can do more in streamlining this process.

A perfect example of the benefits that said streamlining process will have is the influence of Miblo's annotations on the various stream series on the Network. We want to aim for a system in which it is trivial to type something that one wishes to know about and instantly see relevant and helpful results.

The team has decided that our first step in pursuing this goal is to make improvements to the project system on the website. We'd like to offer the ability to filter and search projects to more efficiently offer users of the website information regarding projects that they might find entertaining, useful, or educational. Ultimately, this is a small step, but we thought it'd be best to start with something small to familiarize ourselves with working on Handmade Network.

I'd like to stress that we are more than happy to hear feedback, suggestions, and other comments from you all. Please let us know what you think!

Handmade Fund

Casey Muratori, host of Handmade Hero, recently made a video explaining Handmade Fund. This is an effort of his to distribute funding to projects that he sees as promoting Handmade software development, including Handmade Network and many of its projects! If you'd like to support Handmade software development and Handmade Network (as well as the efforts of Allen Webster in making 4coder and Miblo in making series annotations), check out the above video, and find out more here.

Wrapping It Up

Thanks for reading this monthly news post, and also for your support of the new team as we move forward to continue to promote Handmade software development. I couldn't be more excited to continue to help make software better!

Ryan

mrmixer

Simon Anciaux, 5 years, 9 months ago

Could you at some point summarize the state of the different projects related to HMN ? For example, what has become of the lessons ? Apart from the "Intro to C" from Allen Webster, we never heard of any of them. Will the site have a search function that is not Google search ? E-mail notification ? ...

Delix
The implementation of the wiki was certainly a step in the right direction[...]

I think that some things were lost with the addition of the wiki. For instance, the talk page isn't as good as posting in the forums, the talks dont's show up in the rss feed, so if I think something is wrong but am not sure, I'm less likely to ask a question and even less likely to get an answer. Wiki articles also don't get you a "Thanks for the post..." (which I understand is not the point of a wiki article) but if I spend a lot of time writing an article, and I feel it's ignored, I'm less likely to write another one.

Good luck Captain

ryanfleury

Ryan Fleury, 5 years, 9 months ago

Hey Simon, thank you for the comment! This is very valuable feedback. I'll directly address your statements right now, and I will do my best to ensure you hear more about them in the future.

mrmixer
Could you at some point summarize the state of the different projects related to HMN ? For example, what has become of the lessons ? Apart from the "Intro to C" from Allen Webster, we never heard of any of them. Will the site have a search function that is not Google search ? E-mail notification ? ...

Summary of Past Projects

To answer your question regarding past Handmade Network projects and whether the community will hear about them: Absolutely. This is something I will bring to the team's attention. We wanted to first discuss what we'd like to focus on as a team, but I am in agreement that the community deserves to hear about past projects that perhaps did not pan out (or are perhaps in need of continuation).

Non-Google Website Search

I completely agree with you that better search functionality would greatly benefit the website in many dimensions. This is something that the team and I have spoken about. We have plans regarding this, but as I mentioned in the article, we wanted to start small to grow more familiar with working on and running Handmade Network.

The Wiki

mrmixer
I think that some things were lost with the addition of the wiki. For instance, the talk page isn't as good as posting in the forums, the talks dont's show up in the rss feed, so if I think something is wrong but am not sure, I'm less likely to ask a question and even less likely to get an answer. Wiki articles also don't get you a "Thanks for the post..." (which I understand is not the point of a wiki article) but if I spend a lot of time writing an article, and I feel it's ignored, I'm less likely to write another one.

You're making an extremely valuable point here. We agree that there are numerous improvements to be made, and have also spoken about these. I personally share many of your concerns, though I agree broadly with the Wiki's mission of being a movement to streamline information. The team is hoping to address many of the concerns you mentioned (and several other concerns as well).

--

Thanks again for the comment; I hope that my response was helpful in addressing some of your concerns. I hope that the team's future work will help improve the site! Don't hesitate to give us feedback when said work arrives.

mrmixer
Good luck Captain