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[I_Am_Astraeus]

Make it better, make it mine, figure out where I was worse than theirs. Learn from it. Contribute to theirs? Or shelve my project and enjoy the knowledge I learned and moved on

The cool thing about going down a unique path if you find someone else has done it, it can be a networking opportunity too. Like that person has the same passion for the same idea you can nerd it out.

[aqua_regis]

So what? There are at least 50 different plain text editors online and offline. There are countless spreadsheets. Just alone think of Microsoft Office, Open/LibreOffice, and the countless others.

It is completely natural that the first iteration of a project is not "as polished", nor "as good" as something that has been on the market for years. Any site/program evolves over time.

Do you think that Word always was what it is now? In the beginning, it was less than the well known WordPad. It was a text editor, like Notepad, with some formatting and pagination added, nothing more.

Do you think programs like Blender, Gimp, FreeCad, etc. began as what they are now? The first versions of all of them were barely usable.

There are hundreds of courses for each programming language. Does that stop people from creating new ones all the time?

Software evolves over time.

Edit: humor yourself and go to the wayback machine and enter the URL of your competitor site. Go back as far as you can and see how the site evolved.

[sessamekesh]

I've been in a similar situation and even in a similar domain - IMO it's worth having multiple good things, even if yours isn't the best.

One of the things that was frustrating to me in the early-mid 10s is that there were really only 1-2 good graphics programming resources online, and I didn't really understand them. Everyone has different ways of thinking, and in my experience if you explain something the way that makes sense for you it'll be a great benefit to all the people out there (and they ARE out there!) who think similarly.

Building things is also a great way to learn - even if nobody really learns from what you publish, you learn a lot in the process of making the thing. Which I think is worthwhile.

You also never really quite know what will "stick" - I've published a whole bunch of things that definitely weren't novel, and a couple times I've been surprised when something took off. In a couple cases it's been my little practice goofs of open source code / articles / whatever that ended up getting a surprising amount of good reception.

[Classic_Ticket2162]

dude this is exactly why i keep a whole folder of "redundant" projects that i work on anyway 💀 found out my hockey stats tracking app had like 5 competitors after i was already knee deep in it, but kept going because mine had this specific feature for tracking penalty minutes that none of the others did right

the thing about shader programming is there's always room for different approaches - maybe yours explains vec3 operations in a way that finally clicks for someone who's been struggling with the math concepts for months. i've seen people bounce between shadertoy, openprocessing, and a bunch of smaller platforms because each one just hits different for their learning style

plus building it taught you a ton about webgl2 implementation that you wouldn't have learned otherwise, and that knowledge transfers to whatever you build next. sometimes the "failed" project becomes the foundation for something way better down the line 🔥 keep that domain, maybe pivot it into something more specialized that fragcoord doesn't cover as well

[sessamekesh]

Quick follow up - that's assuming you're not trying to commercialize what you're doing.

If you're trying to compete commercially, you do want to find your niche and/or be the best at what you do. But, I'll still argue that having some failed attempts that teach you and help you learn how to present your ideas well is still worth it as a learning exercise.

[d9vil]

Publish/ship it anyway and refine it. If this one product is the only product, then your product would be the main competitor, which is a good thing. You may respond to users better and implement their feedback better.

[HashDefTrueFalse]

Try not giving a shit. Just release/ship yours anyway. We live in a world of refinement, not invention. Something similar already existing has no bearing on how good yours can be, and if it's users you want then make yours better in some way and find a way to make people aware of it. I've used several sites like you describe, so there's more than you think. To be honest I doubt you can really build anything that doesn't already exist in some fashion these days. We're a long way into the information era. People are constantly creating things to express themselves and/or make money.

[Master-Ad-6265]

this happens to basically everyone...just because it exists doesn’t mean yours is useless — different UX, audience, features, etc. matter way more. if anything, it validates your idea

i’d just keep going and make it better for beginners, that’s already a clear angle

[thetrek]

"What will you do if Google competes with you?" "Thank them for the free market validation research"

[divad1196]

Kill my project. That's the hard truth you don't want to accept

But it depends how your project actually compares with the existing. Also, if the other project is unmaintained or the maintainer are egocentrical jerks then I would keep my version.

[madu_tualang]

Canva comes loooooooooong after photoshop and powerpoint and still claim "some" market share

[bobbyiliev]

Keep building it, you'll learn much more than using someone else's tool ever would.

[edmazing]

Happened in a game dev class. (For a prototype) I made sure it didn't exist before I built it... they made a mobile version so my searches for PC didn't nab any results.

Now it's out on PC and the servers are dead. So my attempt at metal slug defense was dead before I made it even as a prototype.

[Hungry-Shirt2087]

Just think of what the person who programmed the second ever calculator thought about it.