Cleveroad on Github: How We Got in the Top 3 in Ukraine

Once upon a time, some talented Android developers from Cleveroad faced a problem trying to find a nice and handy library for making animated tutorials inside an app. There were some variants but they were all wrong. The graphics were poor, the code was bad and many other things which lead us to an idea that we are the only people who can create the library which would fulfill all our requirements.

What we needed was a convenient tool, rather versatile so we could use it in the future. And we started with brainstorming. After a while our brainchild was ready. The result was great and at that moment we understood that we have to share our masterpiece with the world. It was our first step towards success.

But it was not the end of story. There is nothing perfect, neither was our project. We continued working on the library to make it better, more convenient and easier to implement into any project.

It was just a start. Now after six years of hard work and self-development, we have so much experience that we feel we are obliged to share it with you.

To date, our company has shared 12 Android and 7 iOS projects (one in Swift and 6 in Objective-C) on Github. We never plan what next open source library is going to be published next. When our created solution is unique, fresh and innovative we know that we need to share it with you. Sometimes, it happens that we see how developers are looking for something specific. In such cases (if we have some spare time) we want to create something special for our friends on Github. And when we release these projects our best reward is feedback from those developers who needed the solution the most.

When we choose the subject (usually it means that someone breaks into the office screaming I have an idea, we need to make it for everyone), we discuss the idea with the developers and designers. Our talented designers work on the static elements and create a UI layout and describe the whole idea. The last step means that the designers create all the requirements in a form of documentation. Then, they prepare all the graphic resources. For our best design concepts, you can check on our Dribbble account.

When the UI layouts and documentation are ready, the developers start doing magic (I mean coding). The guys are always communicating and sharing intermediate options with the designers to make sure that we stay on course. If we aren't satisfied with the result (it can be not as handy as we thought) we develop it further until it's perfect. We always design all our pages on Github in the same stylistics to make it even more pleasant for you to check out our works.

After the release, we wait. We wait for feedback. Your feedback. What we need to know is that we've done a good job and our solution is useful. Even if there are some small faults, we are glad to fix them but we really (really, really) need to make sure that other developers use our libraries.

Why we like Github is not only because it's a huge platform for different developers, we also like it because it provides us with the analytics which are so important in our work. Statistical data shows which of our open source projects are the most popular (useful) and which need to be improved.

The analysis of the result is a needed part for us, it helps us create better and better free products for you.

We are proud of every line of code in our Github account because everything we publish has been double checked, thought through and discussed at least 100 times. With our libraries, we want to solve real problems and our rating shows that we are on the right path. Let us introduce you to some of our greatest libraries.

AdaptiveTableLayout is a library to work with CSV files. The tool allows you to read, edit and create files in CSV format. The library is based on Java language and was specifically designed for Android devices.

The AdaptiveTableLayout is an extremely popular project. It's got more than 1,200 stars and we are glad that our work is being used by so many developers.

FanLayoutManager is also an Android development. It's a library to create simple horizontal lists. What we wanted to achieve here, is to let you create something modern and interesting. We added more colors and a new motion path.

With the help of our library, your list will look like colourful blades. Moreover, you can change the angle of the list items and create different effects using only one library. This project has gotten 1,500 stars and I am sure the number will increase.

PlayWidget is one of the latest projects we shared on Github. It is a perfect tool to create a unique view of your music player. The fashion changes so fast and a music app launched 2 or 3 years ago now seems to be old fashioned. PlayWidget is a great idea for those who want to update the design of their music apps and get even more users on the store.

We published this library in the end of August and more than 260 developers gave us a star. We hope that this project will be as useful as all the others.

What we wanted to say with this article is that we are so proud of ourselves and of you, of course. We are proud that we've published 19 open source libraries. We've got more than 11 thousand stars for Java projects, about a thousand stars for Objective-C projects and more than half a thousand stars for the Swift project. And these numbers are constantly growing. But, the fact that warms our hearts the most is that we took the second place among all corporate accounts in a Github rating in Ukraine.

All this data persuades us to keep going with the same pace and share our knowledge, skills, and creativity with you.

As I have already mentioned, we don't plan what to create for Github. Sometimes, we understand that we have to share our code after we wrote it. And sometimes, we develop something specifically for our friends on Github. Nevertheless, we have lots of ideas we want to implement and share with you. First of all, we now want to expand our collection of the libraries written in Swift. And second of all, we plan to finish some projects in Kotlin and share them with you as soon as possible.

Do you want to be the first who will get our next article about Kotlin? Then subscribe to our blog and don't miss our special researches!