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Arth
Arth

Posted on • Updated on

Do Github stars matter?

Pretty sure most developers have thought about this when building their open-source projects and then after a while realizing that their project got barely 2 to 3 stars and sometimes not even that.
Well, the answer is clearly yes. Stars do matter on Github projects. The stars project confidence and quality on a project, but it doesn't necessarily mean if a project doesn't have stars, it's not good or anything like that. However, a project with lots of stars is most likely a good quality project and something worth contributing to and to use in your project.

How do you get stars in the first place?

I was at the same place four weeks back ( still am in a way ) when I made the codebase for my coding platform ( DomeCode ) open-source because I felt like closed-source is more like an artificial barrier, and people should be able to use my code for their free and open-source projects.

Even though I have proven that I'm close to a saint, I should also state that this feeling is subject to change in the future, but presently, my project is well open-source and has gotten 47 stars so far. Technically, ~12 stars a week.

Either way, the point is it's good to have stars just like it's good to have money. In similarity with fiat currencies, the stars don't mean everything, but they do certainly mean something, and you got to have that if to ease your way through.

Cutting the shit and getting straight to it, these are the strategies to deploy in order to get stars:

  • Beg
  • Blog
  • Shit post everywhere
  • Ask your closest friends to do the same

Eventually, you'll get to 100k stars, and to be clear, this is what I want with DomeCode.

Oh, and DomeCode](https://domecode.com/) is essentially a platform that improvises over existing "code to learn" platforms by making the process of going from point A ( picking a language ) to point B ( getting good at it ) easily than ever by including tools and resources along with the whole-some community to make your experience better.

Feel free to support me in my journey by starring DomeCode on Github.

My Github - https://github.com/arthtyagi/
DomeCode - https://domecode.com/
DomeCode's Github - https://github.com/the-domecode/
My personal website - https://arthtyagi.me/
Discord - https://discord.gg/ZwTJPNB/

P.S This was partly satire for those of you who didn't get it. This post script, on the other hand, deems the whole motive of satire pointless.

Top comments (15)

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trungk18 profile image
Trung Vo

Count me in as the 53th star for doomcode. I would say I am always happy to see people star my repository. Why? Because they probably like my code or my contribution and they want to give it back, or to remember later on to visit.

Seeing github.com/trungk18/jira-clone-ang... growing from 4 stars among my dearest friend to a few hundred within days was really a journey that I have never experience 🤣

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matteobruni profile image
Matteo Bruni

Teach me! I started a project in February and I haven't reached 1k stars yet, close but not reached yet.
Where did you share your project?

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trungk18 profile image
Trung Vo • Edited

I think if you code something that people are looking to see, they will not hesitate to give you a star. Also, prepare a detailed README with as many screenshots as you can.

I built that with Angular and I shared it on:

  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Write a blog post on Medium

Luckily, It got the attention from people and some of them are quite famous among Angular community. They also retweeted about my project and that's how it is crossing a thousand stars 😂 Count me as the 941th star yeah. But in exchange, you have to star mine 😎Just kidding and good luck!

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matteobruni profile image
Matteo Bruni

The project is this: github.com/matteobruni/tsparticles

The main issue is visibility since it's an alternative to Particles.js (it's a Typescript rewrite with new features and bugfix tbh) there's a lot of articles/tutorial for the other project so it's hard for mine to gain visibility.

Many projects around particles.js are abandoned but this doesn't help much having visibility.

I tried getting some attention but I miss the big retweets. At least I'm having a lot of fun working with this project 😄

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trungk18 profile image
Trung Vo

Yeah as long as you are happy working on that, that's enough. Maybe tag some famous fork when you tweet next time, ask for their opinion then?

When I start the first line of Jira clone, I wouldn't image one day I will have a thousand star repo 😂 Anyway, I followed you on twitter. Looking for your next project man.

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lexplt profile image
Alexandre Plt

Same, I also star things I think I will use in the future

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bimlas profile image
bimlas

Stars are our means of payment: the more we get, the more we like to continue the project. If we don’t get stars (and we don’t just make the project for ourselves), we’ll probably abandon it because we feel like no one is using it.

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perpetual_education profile image
perpetual . education

We hope not! hahhahaha

We hope downloads don't matter either... because - what do they mean?

For example - you download Ember.js once - and make a project that lasts 4 years... vs - you Download React 27 times - and never finish anything.

Now, if we could tell how many things were active... and then actually measure things - that would be interesting.

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webbureaucrat profile image
webbureaucrat

I'm a GitLab user instead, but this post made me chuckle. +1 heart.

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andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

Yep I use stars like bookmarks and also as a way to gauge how popular a project is.

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arthtyagi profile image
Arth

Ah nice, seems like everyone uses the stars as a measure of popularity and quality.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️

If you're making anything and you're just in it for the stars, likes, hearts, unicorns, whatever - then you're doing it for the wrong reasons

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fennecdjay profile image
Jérémie Astor • Edited

I understand they can play a role in one's project visibility, but to be honest every new star (particularly on this) makes my day 😄

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adriangrigore profile image
Adrian Emil Grigore

Same, I generally discover cool things when I revisit my stars.

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zdev1official profile image
ZDev1Official

Well GitHub stars are like YouTube likes!

If someone likes your project and repo, you'll get a star (if he needs)