kyyberi/100daysofdx

One DX related post every day for 100 days. Written 14.7.-6.11.2019

100daysofdx's Issues

You don’t know the power of the dark side

Description

• What this post should discuss?
  Recent studies have even suggested that dark mode interfaces use less power and feel easier on the eyes. In any case, dark mode is a straightforward feature you can add to your API docs.

Developer-centric API development (17) 30.7.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Product centric development is known, but developer centric is kind of a variation of customer centric product development.

• Why the post content matters?

Success stories such as Stripe and DocuSign have applied developer-centric strategy in product development.

• What the reader will learn?

What is developer-centric approach and how it differs from product centric.

Draw me a developer

Dig out some stats of developers and how they work, learn and do stuff. There's a risk that this will be stereotypical "picture" of a developer, but still.

Avoid chatty APIs

Chatty APIs just suck.

Investors invest in developer-centric approach (31) 13.8.2019

Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) which has funded for example PagerDuty, SendGrid, npm and Auth0 writes that “Today developers may be the most important decision maker in the technology space with more control over spending than ever before.[...] Our team at BVP strongly believes in the power of developer-centric platforms to drive innovation.”

Add pagination to index page

The list is getting long and load time increases. Add pagination.

Refine the list of suggested topics in the site http://100daysdx.com/topics/

Separate accepted and coming topics from rest of the suggestions. All accepted topics will have "Accepted" label.

DX vs UX - Battle or Middle Ground? (37) 19.8.2019

Description

• This post would be a diary like experience gained by an UX designer when working side by side with Developers in a new platform technology
• UX designers are often accused of staying too far away from the technological constraints while designing service experiences for intended users. The accusation are occasionally made by core developers indicating UX designers don't care about internal developer experience, especially when working on a project aiming at Developers. The job of gaining their confidence hard, but not impossible. How I worked my way in within my current workplace, I will provide the directions I followed.
• The balance between co-existence, compromise and holding your own ground.

Why should I build a library on top of APIs?

You've got mail (33) 15.8.2019

Support contacts

Managing internal and external developer experience in platform DX development

When shit hits the fan error messages should come to the rescue (26) 8.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Error messages

• Why the post content matters?

Bad error messages frustrate, consume developer's time and is just bad DX. Idea came from developer community. Obviously an important thing. https://twitter.com/sakhuttu/status/1158977489529704453

• What the reader will learn?

What is a good error message with REST APIs.

Day 42 must be The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy related

Some quotes to use:

"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42."

" A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."

“Forty-two, said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm."

"There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."

Great getting started guides go to the point and evolve

10x engineer myth - artisans rather than machines with multipliers. (branch day5)

That topic flamed again recently in my Twitter bubble. I see developers are artisans rather than machines with multipliers.

Open source overrun by API?

What is the role of open source after the success of APIs?

Start a newsletter

Feedback and idea came from a follower:

"Very cool - yes, I started following the 100 days articles even though I would love to get them via a newsletter (I'm sure I can't get myself to time and look at it every day) :) I would love to contribute to the content, actually."

This might help some of the readers to follow and reduce the FOMO - fear of missing out.

This could be done for example with https://curated.co/

Phileas Fogg 80 days

Just for the sake of the number make something out of the Phileas Fogg story

Camels and Snakes of the Developer eXperience

Let’s play API -darts! (25) 7.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

API types:

• open data interface

• Public APIs (open api, partner API)

• Internal APIs.

• Why the post content matters?
  To understand API economy and DX, one must understand what API categories exists and why.

• What the reader will learn?
  API types and and the differences.

Fullstack DX 11.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

If the DX is considered brooad enough, then it includes APIs, libraries, SDKs and possibly even webapp components for example for React. This seems to be the stack for Stripe.

Standardization drives better internal and external developer experience (32) 14.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Standardization is the #1 API technology challenge facing API teams according to State of API report by smartbear. API Design Guides is a tool for that.

• Why the post content matters?
• What the reader will learn?

Old school command line interface rocks (16) 29.7.2019

Why? What is it? How does it work? How about documentation? Some examples from API world.

Is it App, API or Integration? (22) 4.8.2019

The above has been easy to understand. While I’ve been giving API Economy talks in various local and international events, I have noticed that some of the audience have difficulties to understand the difference between Application (app), API and Integration.

Focus to offer best possible DX (34) 16.8.2019

If you are developing a platform, you most likely have couple of developer profiles which define the developers who you want to serve. In Platform of Trust there two major developer directions: data integration and app development. Inside both we have managers and developers. Our focus is 80% on the developers, those whose daily work with the platform we aim to serve and make pleasant.

SLA from developer point of view

Description

• What this post should discuss?
• Why the post content matters?
• What the reader will learn?

Push APIs to catalogs

Description

• What this post should discuss?

It would be cool if APIs as part of documentation generation could be pushed to catalogs too ensure maximum reach.

• Why the post content matters?
• What the reader will learn?

As a developer I need to be aware of breaking changes or death

Changes and deprecation.

Great Developer eXperience serves the less talented developers most

Lack of great developers who can work with any tools is a problem. Most of the developers are so to say average. They need tools and APIs which are easy to use so that they can be productive. Even spaghetti coders like me can create some solutions.

I don't have time nor the skills to compile stuff, setup huge complex stack to build something. I need simple easy to use tools.

Show the result as selling argument (branch day6)

To convince me about the service I need to "see" the result first. This came obvious while I was looking for a text to speech service. I wanted to hear the voice result first and after that commit to one of the services.

Having a sandbox is vital. Ability to do it as self-service is vital.

Developer eXperience 2.0 (19) 1.8.2019

Description

Deeper dive into the concept.

Some requirements for DX from consumer's perspective (21) 3.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Some simple 6-8 guide lines or requirements from API consumer

• Why the post content matters?

Helps to understand what to focus on as API provider

• What the reader will learn?

Simple guide lines

Quick start and in-depth API documentation

Great sustainable DX is built with plethora of skills and disciplines (38)

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Technical strategy options of Developer eXperience

I've a bit more detailed view to DX that what was discussed in the original first post in this blog.

Console or API client packages?

I'm not sure which is better:

• To offer full blown API console to fiddle with your APIs or
• focus on providing API client packages for for example Postman and Insomnia.

Recruiting dystopia

This popped up some time ago as form of injecting md file to repository

This is part of DX - sort of.

Tools tools tools! Developers love tools (32) 14.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Tools are something which are loved by the developers. They need a lot of tools when crafting applications and services. They have the capability to build tools by themselves. Make tool development open source.

Solow paradox and DX

Description

• What this post should discuss?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox and DX in APIs and platforms.

• Why the post content matters?

An intriguing idea, that's it :)

• What the reader will learn?

Focus transter from API Docs towards Sandboxes (20) 2.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

The concept of enriching or expanding own API Docs with code examples and answers in SO.

• Why the post content matters?

Stack Overflow codesnippets are an invaluable code-centric knowledge base ofsmall units of source code. Besides being useful for softwaredevelopers, these annotated snippets can potentially serveas the basis for automated tools that provide working codesolutions to specific natural language queries

• What the reader will learn?

What are the opportunities and some of the pitfalls

Konami code

This would make a great topic - just use the konami code.

Discuss cheatsheets and what can be seen as konami code when dealing with APIs

In mobile view Progress of 100 Days of DX is too narrow

Just too narrow. Could be a lot wider and fill more of the page

Machine-readable API specifications are part of the documentation

Some consider that html rendered documentation is enough. That's a start, but specs expand the usability of your docs.

Trial or freemium - which one to choose? (24) 6.8.2019

Description

• What this post should discuss?

Trials and freemiums are provided to enable API testing. learning and evaluation. Two models exists, which one to choose? Which is better for developer?

• Why the post content matters?

Big part of DX is to try your API for free. You would not buy a car without a test run either. Yet the strategies differ from developer point of view.

• What the reader will learn?
  Freemium/trial significance in onboarding, what are the differences.

Documentation that makes you feel like you never left your editor (23) 5.8.2019

Description

I'm in awe when I experience documentation that feels so familiar. Like I never left my editor. A great example is Stripe: https://stripe.com/docs/api

If you just start searching (simply hit '/'), you will know what I mean:

I would love to discuss how current dev platforms make developers feel like they're home. In their own editor or CLI.

Readers should learn about most recent trends on documentation UX.

Great Developer eXperience makes the platform tick (15) 28.7.2019

Day 15

API analogies

Restaurant
Child - father (breakfast)
REST vs Graphql (hamburger)

Custom code for Zapier to include contributor handles to daily tweets

Description

I would love to add Twitter handles of the contributors to automated tweets now handled with Zapier. Zapier reads the RSS feed from https://100daysdx.com/feed.xml.

When ever new articles is found, Zapier pick title and link from the item and adds some tags.

RSS feed contains <contributors:contributorHandles> element which contains Twitter handles of the contributors as a string for example: @timorph @iTimo @kypeli.

Zapier strips the @ from the handles before tweeting the message.

Solution

Enable RSS driven automatic tweets so that @ are preserved.

Bad developer experience - $85 billion lost opportunities (bad-experience) 31.7.2019

Day 16

API clients