{"id":7080,"date":"2020-05-17T04:39:20","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T23:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/?p=7080"},"modified":"2020-06-29T18:12:13","modified_gmt":"2020-06-29T13:12:13","slug":"developer-experience-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/developer-experience-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Developer Experience (DX) in one word?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Developer Experience (DX) is the experience of using a developer tool or extending your product (meant for developers), API, open-source code, or just about anything that has to do with developers. It&#8217;s the equivalent of User Experience when the primary user of the product is a developer.<\/p>\n<p>As a consultant who helps businesses understand developers, this term DX is thrown around a lot and probably heavily discussed. It&#8217;s fun to see how the definition changes based on the context of a project\/company or thoughts of the company&#8217;s CTO.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"developer-experience\">Developer Experience\u2026<a href=\"#developer-experience\" class=\"heading-link\">#<\/a><\/h2>\n<p>&#8220;<strong>What&#8217;s the first thing you think of when you think of &#8220;Developer Experience&#8221; (DX)?<\/strong>&#8221; \u2014 asked Chris Coyier on Twitter today.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">What&#39;s the first thing you think of when you think of &quot;Developer Experience&quot; (DX)?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/chriscoyier\/status\/1261769454645587973?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 16, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">And here&#8217;s what I shared\u2026<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In two words: &quot;Less Friction&quot;<\/p>\n<p>More context:<\/p>\n<p>\u2705 Less clicking<br \/>\u2705 More automation<br \/>\u2705 Zero or less configuration<br \/>\u2705 Great documentation (searchable)<br \/>\u2705 Dark mode. VSCode support. Next.js<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Awais (@MrAhmadAwais) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAhmadAwais\/status\/1261798830376472577?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 16, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In two words: &#8220;<strong>Less Friction<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2705 Less clicking<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 More automation<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Zero or less configuration<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Great documentation (searchable)<\/li>\n<li>\u2705 Dark mode. VSCode support. Next.js<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2026ok the last one there might be too close to my heart but all things considered, having a good DX can mean a lot of things to your company.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Developer Experience has a cost to it.<\/strong> Some companies, in an effort to improve DX around their products, sacrifice the User Experience (UX) whereas I believe there should be a good equilibrium between DX &amp; UX. It&#8217;s what some people call the Trickledown Experience. <em>A story for another day.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"quote-content\">\n<p>If you are on Craigslist looking to buy a bed. And you find a listing of a bed that&#8217;s free. You immediately think that there&#8217;s something seriously wrong with it. Bed bugs or part of a crime scene.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time if you find a listing of a bed that&#8217;s USD 5000. Your mind goes, &#8220;oh boy; this bed must be amazing, how lucky are the people who get to sleep on it&#8221;. And you wonder\u2026<\/p>\n<p>DX works in a similar fashion. Just because you open-sourced an SDK doesn&#8217;t mean developers are going to fall heads over heels in love with your product. It&#8217;s an art. For that, you need help from a practicing artisan. Who knows what developers care about. Invest in that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Developer Experience (DX) is the experience of using a developer tool or extending your product (meant for developers), API, open-source code, or just about anything that has to do with developers. 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