this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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The Case for Developer Experience (future.com)
submitted 1 year ago by epchris to c/experienced_devs
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Developers are operating and building in more and more heterogeneous and complex systems. This article offers some thoughts on how to think about "developer experience" in this world that's increasingly more like a "rainforest" than a "well tended garden".

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[–] kersplort 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The overview is good, and the outline is good, but ultimately the problem is that the returns on big investments in DX are only really seen for companies at absolutely massive scale. There are far more companies that just burned through money getting a "nice" dev environment than there are companies that put a FTE or more into DX and saw worthwhile results.

It's worth some time for teams to think critically about their own tooling, but the trend towards DX as an end in and of itself has been a drag on many teams.

[–] anzo 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can't help it, I will succumb to the temptation and extend the analogy: Only in a rainforest, evolution of the developers can happen. A well tended garden would be good for productivity, but bad for creativity.

[–] douglasg14b 3 points 1 year ago

I think you can have a well tended garden without giving up creativity.

You're not sacrificing creativity by practicing structures, considerations, and methodologies that maintain or improve the developer experience with whatever creative endeavor you're on.

The structure of your garden doesn't prevent you from playing around with new plants, it just outlines a set of patterns and expectations known to drive better outcomes.

I'm not saying that your extension of the analogy is bad I'm just disagreeing with some of the premise.

[–] epchris 2 points 1 year ago

I don't think that's a bad extension of the analogy