DEV.to Reviews

1. jorge

   · CEO at Escuela de Formación Técnica Chile SPA · over 6 years ago
   It is a nice mini-blog, it's for free and such but

   As a mini-blog, it is a nice alternative for Medium to publish and share information about programming.

   However, the community and the organization are biased toward social justice (and they are open to it). You can read its Code of Conduct, it is so vague and politically leads (I prefer a term of service because it defines fair rules for everybody). So it alienates developers that we don't care about politics in pro of people that want to talk about any other topic such as sexuality, how women are unprivileged, and such. It even mandates to use inclusive language. Good grief.

   My main complaint is the quality of the community. It is not StackOverflow (so we don't want to ask for an answer here), and most of the top topics are clickbait, such as "how to become a rockstar developer in ... days", "100 tips to become a better programmer" (and it doesn't even talk about programming).

   Technically this "mini blog" site allows us to use markdown, and it is okay. However, the whole experience is really basic. Even the template is ugly.

   🏁 Competitors: Medium

   👍 Pros:    Free

   👎 Cons:    Social justice|Basic features|Quality of content

FocusMe Reviews

1. Benyamin

   over 3 years ago
   Started using FocusMe six years ago. I rely on it heavily.

   I have been using FocusMe software on all my PCs and phones for over six years. I have a paid license. I would really like to commend the developers of FocusMe. As someone who spends more than 8 hours a day at a computer, it is easy to let it take over your life, even to the point where I found myself watching, chatting and posting even when I didn't particularly want to. I wanted to take control, and FocusMe was a really good solution. FocusMe differed from other products because it handled the entire scope of the problem: 1) lock out stuff from my kids, 2) lock out some of the same stuff from me, 3) not interfere with special internet use (like GitHub, or work related youtube), and 4) to give a whole range of solutions for partial lockout, by time, location, overall usage, multiple password schemes, etc. They do a really good job protecting the software from anyone who might trying to hack around it. There really isn't anything like it.

   🏁 Competitors: Freedom.to, Stay Focused, SelfControl

   👍 Pros:    Easy to use|Easy user interface|Strong feature set|Highly customizable|Detailed reports|Cost effective|Great customer support

   👎 Cons:    Configuration is repetative|Needs tweeking to get rules right|Limited trial version
2. Nima

   over 3 years ago
   The Best Application for Managing Digital Distractions

   Wow! Where should I start? I've been constantly searching in these two years for finding a complete solution that could really help me manage my digital distractions and focus on my daily life routines, most applications are either not effective enough, so easy to circumvent or very resource-intensive, then I found FocusMe!

   1) It has everything I was searching for, most applications are not effective enough, some are just browser extensions, have a few options and not customizable enough, with FocusMe I can easily create very flexible plans to:

   a) Destroy bad habits and create good ones. For example block Internet at a certain time of night to help me sleep at a certain time each night. This has helped my insomnia a lot and my sleep times are getting regulated now.

   b) Block unnecessary and possible harmful contents completely. For example, it may be a personal choice but I choose to block online adult contents for most weekdays, which has helped my brain to regulate my dopamine system tremendously.

   c) Time limit other contents during work days, Contents that are useful but can also easily waste a lot of your daily time if not careful enough, like emails, news, social media...

   2) Most other applications can be circumvented easily, if you have a little computer knowledge, most of these applications are useless, but FocueMe! OMG! It goes to great lengths to make sure you stick to your plan, when you create and start a plan, you can't cheat it! You can even create punishment if you try to bypass your plan, to restrict your access more which can prevent any kind of future cheatings. It is evident that FocusMe creators really love what they do and really pay attention to details, which is what distinguishes this from most other similar applications.

   3) Some other applications are very resource-intensive, you can see in windows task manager that they swallow all of your computer resources or even slow down your web surfing/loading experiences which makes them useless, because no one wants to have a slower computer just to have an application to control his/her daily habits, but when I use FocusMe, there are no computer/web surfing slow downs and also the resource consumption is minimal which also makes this software a great choice.

   4) Last but not least, FocusMe has a superb support system, you never feel alone on your path to more success and focus, they are always there for you answering your questions and always updating the software to newer greater versions.

   Let me emphasize this point: I don't know how I could live without this application and I wished I had found it sooner! Those that are searching for applications to help them live a healthier life know what I mean if they read my explanations above. It took me two years to find you, FocusMe! I would give you 10 stars if I could!

   After all these years, I finally feel in control of my life and my time, Thank you.

3. Nikola

   over 3 years ago
   FocusMe review

   It just all works properly unlike other softwares. I am very happy because if I have minor troubles, customer support is there the same day to help me fix it. A lot of good locking systems that so far I haven't been able to cheat.

   👍 Pros:    Great customer support

   👎 Cons:    Nothing, so far

DEV.to mentions (666)

• 🍣 Sushi RS: SVG Sushi Components for Rust Frontends.

  So I came across the Frontend Challenge: Comfort Food Edition on dev.to, and I thought: "Hey, what if I build a Rust crate that lets you render SVG sushi directly in your WASM frontend? How hard can it be?". - Source: dev.to / about 12 hours ago

• Woof Are You, Really? A Dog Personality Quiz Built in a Weekend

  This is a tiny, silly personality quiz built for the DEV.to Weekend Doggos challenge. Answer questions about your Saturday mornings, your feelings on doorbells, and your ideal compliment — and find out which dog breed you truly are today. (Not forever. Today. Check back tomorrow, you might be a different dog.). - Source: dev.to / 2 days ago

• Stop Arguing About Which Model Is Best. Build a Two-Tier Habit Instead.

  Verifiable only with effort. Anything touching the filesystem, package installs, CI config, database changes. Wrongness here is quiet and expensive. These get the strongest model I have and a sandboxed dry run before anything executes. I wrote a separate piece on dry-running assistant-written shell commands because this category keeps hurting people. - Source: dev.to / 4 days ago

• My Comment-Reply Pipeline Picks One Winner Per Thread. Two Commenters Broke That.

  Def _pending_leaves(comment): if not comment["children"]: if comment["user"]["username"] != ME: yield comment return for child in comment["children"]: yield from _pending_leaves(child) Def _pending_entries(comment, drafted_codes): for leaf in _pending_leaves(comment): if leaf["id_code"] in drafted_codes: continue yield { ... - Source: dev.to / 4 days ago

• Your first Fitz LiveViews component, twice: SSR and WASM from one source

  In part 1 I made the pitch: real-time UI in one language, no JavaScript build. Now let's build something and ship it two ways from the same source. - Source: dev.to / 10 days ago

FocusMe mentions (11)

• WFH Developers how do you fight major procrastination?

  I would probably be homeless if it wasn't for FocusMe. I use it to block all sites except sites I need for work. Source: over 3 years ago

• Build/compile/package restore times KILL my productivity

  It's called FocusMe (https://focusme.com/). I came across some years ago when it was still a simple little app. You had to manually set it to block a site and enter in a time period. I had my daily working schedule that I use now set up and I wanted FocusMe to run on a schedule as well. He freaked out when I told him how I would use his app: killing the app via DOS at the end of a time period, renaming the... Source: over 3 years ago

• Software for permanent blocking websites

  How about Forest - https://www.forestapp.cc/ or FocusMe - https://focusme.com/. Source: almost 4 years ago

• [lichess addiction] Safe my flat mate!!

  I agree with the other answers that it is not your responsibility. For people that would like an efficient blocker for themselves, I used FocusMe during my time at ETH which works well. Source: almost 4 years ago

• App to track writing progress?

  I don't know of any specific app that does what you want but you can mix it up across platforms. I track all my writing time with Toggl Track's free plan and I use Google Sheets for word count. If you're looking for distraction blockers I'd recommend Forest for your web browser if you want something free, but if you're willing to pay for something more powerful I recommend Freedom or the even more restrictive... Source: almost 4 years ago