Usually, there are small key differences, that Devs cannot agree on, so they start separate projects. To you, those differences may seem small, but we #OpenSource #Dev's are pretty opinionated sometimes. 🙂

that'd be terrible

one of the cool things about nostr is that each developer/team can experiment in whatever direction they want and we don't all have to agree in a single view of what the client should be/look like/do/behave

The main benefit of having your own client is that you can make it do whatever you want and not have to compromise on your vision of what the client should do

At this point it's getting hard to start from scratch and get to feature parity alone.

There are people that still do or try it but you certainly lose nothing by exploring if forking an existing client would work, too. After all you learn a thing or two by looking into existing projects.

In my experience, those who started their own clients are often very opinionated and not too welcoming of big new features or changes to their existing features, making it hard to have improvements flow both way.

I think, at some point some client will manage to get ahead of others and this will get more contributors to join forces, further getting it ahead. But not yet as somehow devs still think they can single-handedly catch up and do a better job.

Hi Eric, same questions here. I'm new on nostr as well, and studying some repos and stuff. I've found some tools and got some ideas by reading nips. Also, cloned a client repo to get started.

What I've seen so far is, many devs are also in the same boat, and most are still hustling around to find the best way to achieve the desired goals. Have to admit, most of us are (as already said...) oppinionated about what tech stacks and development approach is better.

Probably at this point, most devs are testing and trying to understand what works better. There's also a "bet", if you're lucky enough, your app could be eventually "famous" and in the long run, some return of the investment. But I'd like to believe that we're here for freedom and the excitement of being part of something greater, something like that. Maybe, finding a purpose, once the web is becoming a hostile place.