RE: Announcing AutoSteem - An automation tool for voting, curating and browsing Steemit!
There are different kinds of development work. You have frontend (the visual and interactive aspects) interacting with backend (the storage, logic, processing, protocols (i.e. rules), consensus algorithms, etc.
I think this AutoSteem project is fantastic, I would however ask you to think about everything that needs to happen "under the hood" to make the Steem block chain work before you eschew the work of the Steemit team. While there are a handful of front-end developers at Steemit, they aren't all working on the look and feel of the site. They are instead focusing on the backend, figuring out how to support larger user bases, new native features, and fixing bugs with the protocol. Some of this stuff is subtle and typical users won't notice a lot of it immediately. Think of it as laying the foundation for a stable building.
Robrigo, I totally agree and respect the devs completely, none of this is easy. Autosteem is strictly that, a front end service on all the devs awesome work on the backend and projects like busy.org coming is much larger than autosteem and I'm exciting about it as well.
IMO, this is precisely what they should be doing.
Having the front end created and run by the same people that also run the backend is a necessary starting point, but the power of the blockchain is that anyone can build a front end.
If steem ends up being very sucessful in the future, i think in five years, we'll all look back on the early days and say something like "remember when steem was so small we had to build our own front end and have people interact with the blockchain that way."
I have great respect for what the Devs have done, but at the same time its no good having the back end working great, larger user bases supported etc if there are no users.
Its so frustrating working with the existing interface. Today yet again I made a mess of a post because of having to use the terrible interface. Well done @unipsycho great work on this tool.
I didn't mean nothing bad about steemit devs. I'm just asked some questions which I think a lot of people here want to know. Your explanation is great and I think it will sit well with many.