On Developer Experience

Developer Experience (DX) is about building products developers love to use. I’ve officially been doing DX work since 2020, but it’s been something I’ve cared about my whole career.

Note: I gave this as a meetup talk in 2025. You can view the recording here.

1. Documentation

Docs make or break developer products.

They must be high-quality and available everywhere: on your website, in their editor, and inside AI chatbots. Your goal is write content beginners can understand and experts appreciate.

Great docs are a product themselves. They need constant updates and polish. New product features can’t ship without the reference docs.

Suggestions

1. Ensure docs have many code examples you can copy/paste or run.
2. Optimize for skimming (good use of bold, italic, lists, headings, images, etc).
3. With writing, be both precise and concise – avoid technical jargon and idioms.
4. Keep the first-time experience simple and slowly reveal complexity.
5. You should still document workarounds even if it’s a product gap.
6. Use AI to automate reviews on docs for spelling, grammar, and brevity.
7. Make it easy for developers to leave feedback on docs (e.g. typos).
8. Embed docs directly in the code for in-editor feedback (e.g. JSDoc).
9. Add automated checks for broken links on git pushes (example).

2. Community

Building community is a long-term investment. It must be in your company DNA.

It’s not a collection of developers you are trying to sell your product to. It’s an exchange. They share bugs, you fix them. They submit pull requests, you merge and encourage them.

This is how you understand what’s working (or not working) with your product. Their feedback shapes the product direction and roadmap.

A community forms around a product when developers feel heard. They share their wins and frustrations, and you respond by improving the product or clarifying the docs. You must meet developers where they already are: GitHub, X, Reddit, Slack, or at meetups.

Suggestions

• You can’t spend too much time talking to developers in the community.
• Make yourself accessible to answer questions (e.g. host an AMA).
• Monitor feedback on social media to understand community sentiment.
• Use a Slackbot to send realtime user feedback to product teams.
• Invest in high-quality swag for your top community members.
• Everybody loves stickers — and they’re pretty cheap — create a bunch!

3. Education

Education is the best form of marketing, second only to customer testimonials.

Good education not only shows people how to use your product but why it exists and what they can accomplish with it. It’s part storytelling, part technical guide, part product demo.

Suggestions

• Build demos that show real-world usage of your product (not just hello world).
• If you answer the same question multiple times, turn it into a guide.
• You need both reference material (docs) and structured learning (courses).