June 29th, 2024

Developer experience: What is it and why should you care? (2023)

Developer experience (DevEx) optimizes software development by empowering behaviors naturally. It enhances productivity, satisfaction, and collaboration among developers, leading to improved business outcomes. Generative AI and continuous feedback play key roles in DevEx advancement.

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Developer experience: What is it and why should you care? (2023)

Developer experience (DevEx) focuses on how people, processes, and tools impact developers' efficiency. It aims to optimize software development by empowering desired behaviors naturally. DevEx considers the entire developer ecosystem, from environments to tools, to enhance productivity, satisfaction, and operational impact. Collaboration is crucial in DevEx, enabling developers to communicate effectively and share knowledge. A good DevEx boosts developer confidence, drives impact, and enhances satisfaction, leading to improved business outcomes. Metrics like deployment frequency and lead time for changes help measure DevEx effectiveness. Companies can enhance DevEx by simplifying processes, accelerating workflows, and monitoring improvements. Generative AI is seen as the future of DevEx, aiding developers in writing quality code faster. Continuous feedback from developers through surveys is essential to gauge satisfaction and make informed improvements. Overall, investing in DevEx is crucial for organizations to drive innovation, improve productivity, and achieve better business results.

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Link Icon 4 comments
By @throwawaymaths - 5 months
If your developer labor force is interchangeable (you can fire or replace someone easily) then you don't have to care about DX. If your labor force is not so interchangeable, don't copy the practices of places where that is the case.
By @OptionOfT - 5 months
Things that I have experienced in the past, that as a whole impacted my developer experience. This is especially important when you join an established project and there isn't really room for improvements and only room for cranking out new features:

    * No local dev, push to AWS and test
    * Local dev only with console.log / println! / cout / ...
    * No ability to attach a debugger
    * No PDB / map files in production
    * No automated smoke testing
    * Always sprinting with deploys every 2 weeks
    * No linter / formatter / ... enforced on PRs
    * A history of PRs where the only comment is 'LGTM'
    * Security rules set up company wide without taking into account Developer Experience (e.g. Local Admin on Windows)
By @liampulles - 5 months
DevEx reads to me like DevOps or platform engineering, etc. - its something that FAANGs care about with 1000s of developers but is probably a waste of time if you are not at that scale.
By @teeray - 5 months
Elon Musk, in a tour last year mentioned SpaceX’s philosophy that “a high production rate cures many ills.” [0] That’s really what DevEx is about. Whatever you are building, you will get it wrong. The faster you can iterate, and the less you can care about each iteration, the faster you will eventually get it right.

[0] https://youtu.be/E7MQb9Y4FAE?t=5m25s