Have you ever used a boilerplate?

4 points by Martinzokov 3 years ago | 12 comments

Hey there HN, a few weeks ago I started building a boilerplate for myself and then realized that some people sell those things.

Have you ever used one?

I'd love to speak with you so I can understand the needs of someone using a boilerplate! Promise I won't sell you anything

makeee 3 years ago |

I run https://divjoy.com, a react codebase generator. Essentially a boilerplate you can customize before exporting your code. It's been a nice business for me over the past few years. As always, the challenge is marketing and differentiating yourself from the numerous free options. Good luck!

Martinzokov 3 years ago | |

I saw DivJoy recently and it looked very cool! Well done man :) I even considered buying it at one point

I agree about the marketing but as I'm still not sure if it's regular devs (most like coding stuff themselves). Also, I'd need to find a distribution channel...

Of course, I don't expect you to share your knowledge on that hahah

makeee 3 years ago | | |

Yeah honestly I'd work on the distribution channel first. My twitter following and https://usehooks.com (which I sold awhile back) was instrumental in the beginning.

muzani 3 years ago |

I used to freelance for over 5 years. Good boilerplates matter. Still constantly working on new ones.

Martinzokov 3 years ago | |

What did you look for in a boilerplate?

muzani 3 years ago | | |

With Android it's actually difficult as most boilerplates go obsolete in 2-3 years.

But basically copying functionality that takes a while to build.

1. Design system [1] that's integrated with Compose. Meaning blocks are built as part of other blocks.

2. Networking and caching - these can take half a day to assemble and debug.

3. Test integration. Easily days or weeks to do on Android, because dumb stuff like some misaligned libraries.

4. Dependency injection, also harder to set up the larger code gets.

[1] https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/atomic-web-design/

kbrannigan 3 years ago |

I have created custom boilerplate for django for personal use.

I just copy the folders over after creating a new projects.

I'm sure there are better ways

verdverm 3 years ago |

I'm working on living boilerplate, so that you can keep getting updates after starting your project from one.

Well, it's one thing you can create with https://hofstadter.io/docs

I bought one on Webflow, but have since moved off their platform to Hugo, which has themes (same idea) and where some are paid too

Martinzokov 3 years ago | |

That looks quite cool! Seems like you've gone for a fully-featured code gen tool

verdverm 3 years ago | | |

Thanks, I built the code-gen / low-code tool I wanted as a developer. We plan to hook up a traditional (drag-n-drop) low-code interface for UI layout and the "anyboard" which is going to be the digital whiteboard experience, because most applications start on the whiteboard, so why not have the application live built as you do that?

xcubic 3 years ago | |

You can use hofstadter to build a live boilerplate? Can we see it somewhere? Highly interested since it's something I tried to build unsuccessfully in the past.

verdverm 3 years ago | | |

See in what sense? Hof can make any code "live" in two senses (1) editable code that can also be updated (2) hot-reload style during development

I don't call out "living boilerplate" as a section in the documentation, but I think setting up a generator module with just static files should suffice. Certainly you can get more fancy if you want your users to provide some inputs.

Happy to help or show you this in Slack or a video call.

I'm planning a *create" subcommand to make this even easier for those who would use your boilerplate. It will have an interactive first time experience like react create-app