Hello! 👋
In my everyday work life I am an iOS developer. However, in my free time I'm building Faelib - a web platform to help developers find and compare software libraries and components. I want to share my journey with you, get your feedback, and hopefully create something truly useful for our community.
Idea
As a professional software engineer, I had to do it countless times: implement complex new feature that the business needs yesterday. The choice often comes to:
- implement ourselves
- use existing component, whether commercial or open source
But be it the right calendar component or a PDF processing library, the process always felt the same - hours of research and investigation across different websites, trying to find pricing plans and capabilities, compiling it into one big comparison table, trying to figure out which parameters are even important.
That's why I started Faelib - to create one place where developers can easily find and compare ready-made solutions for their projects.
Current State
After couple weeks of development, the MVP is live at faelib.com with these core features:
- Search across 30+ popular libraries and frameworks (I know this number is nothing, but I have to start somewhere)
- Filter by platform (web/mobile), language, licensing type (free/paid)
- Side-by-side comparison of up to 4 tools
The North Star
I hope for Faelib to become the go-to platform where developers start their search for components and libraries.
Two very important things for me are:
- free for the visitor, no ads, no promoted libraries
- community driven platform: I do add tools and libraries myself, but I strongly encourage everyone, users and owners, to suggest them as well
Adding a library/framework to the platform is free and will always be. Whether you have a library of your own, or a fan of someone's work, please suggest it via the dedicated form.
Tech Stack
For those interested, the Faelib's tech stack is the following:
- Frontend: Phoenix/LiveView/Elixir
- Backend: Phoenix/Elixir
- Database: PostgreSQL
- Hosting: fly.io
What's Next
I have talked to several people publicly and privately already and collected some great feedback. I am at the very beginning and have uncountable things to improve.
The immediate roadmap includes:
- Expanding the database to include more libraries and frameworks
- Building up the comparison feature.
- Improving search and filtering capabilities
I Need Your Help!
This is where you come in - I'd love to hear your thoughts:
- What features would make this truly useful for you?
- Which libraries or frameworks should I add next?
- How do you currently choose between different tools?
Drop your comments below or reach out directly. Your feedback will help shape Faelib into something we all want to use.
Let's build something awesome together! 🚀
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