When we first picture our new product, it’s wonderful, looks beautiful, and works perfectly every time. We imagine how people will use it and how successful we’ll be. We dream of how quickly and smoothly everything is going to go. In short, it’s fantastic. Then we sit down to figure out how to create our […]
In software development, a “Design Smell” is a signal that something isn’t quite right. Think of it like your car sounding a little bit different or your Spidey Sense tingling. In the best of times, you can immediately point at the problem and know how to fix it. But the rest of the time, it […]
Every startup goes through the debate of “How should we do developer pricing?” The conversation normally goes something like this: Person A: We need to come up a package that developers will buy! Person B: Okay, what if we took the free version and added A, B, and C? Person C: But developers don’t buy […]
After college, I resolved to read one book a month. It can be fiction, non-fiction, technical, business-oriented, or whatever as the goal was to always be absorbing and digesting new ideas and information, even just for fun. With the Kindle app and travel, that was always easy. In 2021, I had a series of major life changes […]
Whenever I advise (or join!) a startup, one of the first conversations goes something like this: “Oh man. Everything here is broken! It sucks! There’s so much to do and not enough people to do it. We’re missing so many things, we don’t know where to start! The product needs so much work. Marketing needs […]
Launching an API is the easiest thing you’ll ever do. On the minimum end, you can put a framework in front of your database and call it done. If you add annotations to your source code, you can even auto-generate documentation. If you want to get fancy, you can use OpenAPI to auto-generate SDKs and […]
While I’ve made a case for Developer Experience (DevEx) – aptly named The Case for a Great Developer Experience – I realized it was making the case to other developers. Obviously developers understand that better docs, a good design, and useful examples make a product easier to use. But how do we quantify that? How […]
After college, I resolved to read one book a month. It can be fiction, non-fiction, technical, business-oriented, or whatever as the goal was to always be absorbing and digesting new ideas and information, even just for fun. With the Kindle app and travel, that was always easy. In 2020, that was a whole other story. Regardless, I […]
I share this post from my friend and former boss, Paul Murphy. Paul is unique in that he’s “American” in the legal sense but has spent most of his life not in the States. That includes working, raising kids, starting businesses, and just generally living. I share this post as a followup to my “The […]
Before I go into this post, I realize that I’m blessed. My job has continued uninterrupted throughout, my family has been healthy, and – while many friends have struggled – it has been painful but not catastrophic. Overall, I have few legitimate complaints. Since COVID-19 spread outside China, the world has been flipped upside down […]