The “Schwarzenegger Myth” of developer content

In the future, night vision won’t be a fancy set of goggles purchased at a sporting goods store.

The Terminator movies taught us it will be incorporated into our vision:

Sure, the movies also warned about an artificial superintelligence, but let’s ignore that part for now. Being able to see in the dark would be pretty cool.

When your vision is clear, you can see far into the distance. Darkness means the best thing you’ve got is your next step.

We can’t expect to illuminate the entire path for developers from the start. What we need to do is provide the next step.

Use cases do a great job of showing the first step.

A developer sees the problem they want to solve and recognizes your product has the solution.

You can’t count on developers using Arnold’s classic line, “I’ll be back.”

The audience is far too skeptical to take your word for it and return later to happily start building. Use cases are very important, but it’s not enough to stop at the flashy marketing page version of a use case—even if those can be inspiring.

Only after you’ve earned technical trust will a dev be back. Avoid the “Schwarzenegger Myth” and help developers see one more step beyond what’s possible to how it’s done.

In my post on how use cases elevate your technical content, I describe the use case journey.

There are different types of use case content:

• Inspiration
• Business case
• Technical case
• Technical overview
• Technical tutorial
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If you only include the non-technical types, developers are more likely to say “hasta la vista.”

So, put on the night vision equivalent of your product knowledge… and show developers the next step.

When you need help making sense of the use case journey or other technical content, reach out to EveryDeveloper.