Glossary
By the Glue Team
A developer experience (DX) platform is infrastructure or tooling designed to make developers more productive and happy. It encompasses documentation, APIs, SDKs, testing frameworks, deployment tools, and support. Good DX platforms reduce friction and enable developers to build faster.
Developer experience platforms include:
Adoption: Good DX increases adoption. Developers choose tools that are easy to use.
Productivity: Good DX makes developers faster. Less friction = more feature work.
Retention: Developers stay with products that respect their time and experience.
Community: Good DX attracts community contributions and word-of-mouth.
Business Impact: Better DX correlates with higher retention and lower churn.
"DX is just documentation." False. Documentation is part of DX but not all. APIs, tooling, and support matter too.
"Good DX is expensive." False. Often cheaper than poor DX (support burden, low adoption).
"We can improve DX later." False. DX built in from start is better than retrofitted.
API Design: Part of DX.
Developer Onboarding: Part of DX.
Codebase Documentation: Part of DX for internal developers.
Q: How do you measure DX? A: Developer satisfaction surveys, adoption rates, support tickets, community activity.
Q: What's the biggest DX problem? A: Usually poor documentation or unclear APIs. Fix those first.
Q: Should internal and external DX be the same? A: Similar principles but tailored to audience. Internal DX focuses on speed. External DX focuses on ease of learning.
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