Developer Platform Gap
Today, with the announcement of Superpeer's closure, I felt that we lost one of the active channels we use in Turkey's developer and creator ecosystem. I shared a post on Twitter about supporting this platform's gap with an open-source alternative. And as always, I received 1-2 open responses and dozens of DMs related to the topic.
However, regarding Batuhan's idea that "cal.com works fine," I want to convey what gap Superpeer "in my opinion" fills in our ecosystem and why it cannot be equated with cal.com. In doing so, I want to describe the platform I have in mind while starting to point out these shortcomings.
Let's start with Superpeer first. I call it a developer and creator platform, but Superpeer was more of an "expert platform" for me. Yes, you could access those experts and have paid/free meetings, but if you ask me, the added value wasn't the appointment scheduling section but the fact that "the expert person had a landing page." If you notice, when people share these links, they say "my Superpeer profile," while on other systems they promote it like "you can schedule an appointment via cal.com/eserlive." In short, we were using Superpeer like a business card and landing page.
Let's get to the part about why we absolutely need such a system. After the Open Software Network, I heard from many people the phrase "how many Turkish developers we don't know or know incorrectly, who are experts in their fields." For this reason, the first project I conceptualized around the end of February after AYA's earthquake activities was the "aya.is platform," which would allow people contributing to AYA to create profiles. It wasn't a new idea for me either; relaunching acikkaynak.github.io/2015 would have been sufficient. However, due to job changes at that time, I couldn't launch it.
Unfortunately, we can only get to know developers and creators in our ecosystem through click-bait agendas on Twitter/X, events that many people are too lazy to attend because very basic things are being discussed or there are dozens of contents on YouTube. But these unfortunately aren't focused on "development" and "production"; quite the opposite, they confine us to a more "lifestyle"-based agenda where it's not professional knowledge but individuals who are in focus. This unfortunately brings our sector to a point where, compared to the past, we don't particularly like each other, and sometimes we say "don't call me a developer, I don't even want to be known that way." At some point, I'm convinced that a medium where "we can express ourselves directly" rather than the points emphasized by these channels will neutralize all this toxic, negative environment.
People who express themselves well generally try to achieve this by creating a website. For example, eser.live, where I first published this article, is a website where I also share my content. Without that place, neither my GitHub profile nor my Twitter nor my YouTube could provide you with "general organized" information about me. I think we realize this situation so deeply that we try to create profiles like bento and linktree to leave a mark. But in my opinion, something is still missing. However, these personal websites eventually become outdated, their discoverability remains low because they are individual websites, and they stop receiving updates.
Hashnode, Medium, and Substack are very article-focused. They don't give you any instrument to customize a bit, share what you produce on YouTube, what you tweet, or introduce your GitHub project.
For this reason, I believe in the need for a system like eser.dev where people can publish their own websites, and going even further with a "multi-tenant" structure that compiles data together, where every developer can create landing pages that tell about themselves and their projects, share their history, include their articles and videos. When this platform is completed, I will transfer it to AYA. Already, starting from the Open Software Network, I started coding things lightly with the name aya.is. Now, the news of Superpeer's closure has accelerated my process.
If your design and Figma sides are strong, I think we should sit down and do a weekend workshop and come up with something similar. In fact, if someone thinks they're an expert in v0, let's directly build the frontend; I promise I'll handle the backend :) To reach me, just write under the tweet.