I'm gonna be upfront with you: "DX" is an overused buzzword. I really hesitated a lot buying the dx.tips domain name!
If you want a bunch of developers to be happy in the short term, sure, give them swag, booze, pool tables, cash, stock, cocaine, whatever.
But in the long term, the more substantial issues crop up that really drive people towards and away certain tools:
- Developer Exceptions - the hidden "WTFs" after you wander off the happy path
- Designing the Developer Journey through complex, feature-filled, general purpose tools
- Growing Developer Community (whether it is just the userbase, or open source contributors, or company-or-user-organized events, or passive consumption)
This is what I mean by DX - not specifically "Developer Experience", but more with "X" as a plug variable denoting everything to do with developers - Developer Tools, Developer Community, Developer Relations, Developer Careers, and so on.
I've had the good fortune to work with some top developer experience teams, and to meet hundreds more working in this field. As an active angel investor and technical community builder, I've often felt that there wasn't really a venue for me to discuss the problems I've faced and the solutions I've tried. I've got many friends who feel the same way too.
My hope is that this becomes a newsletter that becomes an industry outlet for active practitioners in DX. By focusing, I am splitting off the sporadic output that I and my guest authors write on our individual blogs, and centralizing them in one place for discovery, with me as curator. I'm also going for "Tips" - aka short form - as much as possible.
Topics planned:
- Product & Strategy
- API Design
- DevTools Trends
- Hard Problems Working on Platforms
- Open Source Licensing
- Product Led Devtools
- Marketing & Content
- Category Creation
- Twitter/Youtube Guides
- Company Blogging
- Do You Need Launch Weeks?
- Meaningless Taglines
- Competing Against DIY
- Community
- Conference Management
- Sync vs Async Community
- User-Organized Meetups
- Data
- Comp surveys
- Time to 1m Developers
If you like this idea, please subscribe via email or follow @DXTipsHQ. You can also email swyx@swyx.io about sponsorship and guest posting opportunities. Thanks for your support!