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The Best Practices for a Great Developer Experience (DX)

Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’» on October 12, 2017

What is DX? Developer Experience (DX) is the equivalent to User Experience (UX) when the user of the software or system is a developer. ...
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Maria Campbell • Edited

This was a great post Sam. I was publishing an article here today which I had already published to my company website about how to import images into React components, and I used the word directory 99% of the time. However, originally I decided to use the word "folder" instead to shake things up. right before I read your piece I was wondering whether using folder as well would prove confusing. After I read this, I realized that it could be. I write about code a lot and articulate my experiences in articles as well. I always want to make sure that I state things clearly and as simply as possible so that everyone at every level can understand. And besides, just because someone might be very experienced does not mean that they will necessarily follow your explanation. In addition, they might still find a particular topic difficult. I will be taking your advice here to heart for other things. Totally makes sense and extremely helpful. Thanks!

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Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’»

Glad I could help! Yes, consistency of terms is important, and try to use the term from the specific domain. I'm not a react dev, but if "directory" is the term most commonly used, go with that!

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Ben Halpern

Damn this is a great overview. Sharing with the team. Thanks as always Sam.

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Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’»

Very welcome, Ben! I, as always, really appreciate the kind words.

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K

Side-note: The business people are already hijacking DX for digital transformation, so don't be confused if you just read DX somewhere and it doesn't make any sense :D

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Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’»

Ha! Good point!

shakes fist at The Business People

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Dave Orleans

Totally agree. What can be done or have you seen done in the open source space? Volunteers, little time and rush can overlook good documentation. At first I thought it was me when going through OS apps and having a difficult time implementing or learning as a newbie. Thanks for this and it needs to be more mainstream reading!

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Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’»

Dave, totally understand the pressure on open source docs. I think its worth noting that contribution to open source docs is contribution to open source. It doesn't necessarily have to be code you contribute.

Usually, my first thing with any project (OSS or internal company) are fixes to the ReadMe... there's always something to add.

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Jakob Christensen

Spot on. Especially when it comes to documentation where lots of open source projects are lacking, even several of the large and famous ones.

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Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’»

Exactly! You can improve their docs too if they're open source – that'd be a valuable contribution.

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Mac Siri

These are some great advice. Thank you for sharing!

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Sam Jarman πŸ‘¨πŸΌβ€πŸ’»

Thank you! I really appreciate the kind words :)