Every night, as the kids become quiet and drift to sleep, other noises emerge. They’re the faint but unmistakable sounds of another being in our house.
When the sounds first started, we were a bit surprised. Now we’ve come to expect the soft murmur of activity. We aren’t worried about our safety, nor the life form that becomes active after dark.
This nightly tradition is one of the very few signs that a tiny white hamster lives in our midst.
There are a few questions a parent asks about a potential family pet. What is required to care for it? Who will feed it? Because we know who will be ultimately responsible.
Developers have a similar list of questions when evaluating an API or tool. When I ran developer relations for a database-as-a-service, we encountered them regularly:
- Can it do what I need?
- Do I have enough control?
- Will it be maintained?
Developers are asking these questions about your product. If deep integration is required, like a database, the bar for how well you answer them will be high.
Regardless of your product and whether you address each question directly, a developer will find their answer—and rarely by reaching out to ask you.
I cover each of these questions in a recent post to help you evaluate your documentation like a developer.
Adopting a pet is an ongoing commitment to care for a living thing. While your product is not literally alive, it does require dedicated attention to thrive. Developers will look for the signs that you can make that happen.