Curly’s developer experience advice from 1991

What do 1990s movie references and developer experience have in common?

In City Slickers, Billy Crystal went on a cowboy adventure to find himself. He and the rest of the group ride on horseback herding cattle across the American west. Hopefully your developer experience doesn’t leave people searching in the middle of nowhere.

Curly, the cowboy leader in the movie, said life boils down to One Thing. So does developer experience, but we try to complicate it.

Great developer experience is:

• Accurate documentation
• Clear onboarding
• Code samples
• Helpful tutorials
• Developer quickstarts

… and on it goes.

You could probably continue that list. No matter how long it gets, behind every item would be the One Thing.

Developer experience is made of content.

Content that helps a developer move forward. That clarifies, educates, and inspires.

Design, interactivity, and your workflow for building a developer experience are important. But they work to present the words in the most helpful way. They amplify your content.

That’s why when we perform DX Reviews, we look for important content that helps you reach the right developers in the first place. Then we look for how you will use documentation to support both new and returning developers.

Get in touch with questions about your developer content and we’ll help you out!