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Developer experience for API Consumer

In Adam DuVander book "Developer Marketing does not exist" this figure caught my attention. image

He writes the following to explain the figure: "The first impression colors how a developer approaches your company. Next, once a developer has chosen to give you a shot comes that initial experience, the thing you might mistakenly call the developer experience. While getting started is important, it's only the start. You next need to help a developer become successful, which will give them a higher likelihood of becoming a customer. Finally, they'll still need a great ongoing developer experience. Their last visit-as in the most recent- becomes important."

This has several similarities on what in the UX community is refered to as a Journey map and is a powerful tool to understanding the mindset of a person and their actions over time. Journey map

For internal APIs, the initial figure needs some extentions:

  1. First feature request: The functonality of the internal API is very often driven by the demands of the API consumers. Typically, several intiatives/projects will sponsor new parts for it. Developers will be actively seeking information on if the API can fulfill their current needs and if not provide detailed feature requests for new functionality
  2. First operational issue: Sooner or later, the API consuming solution will face downtime for users. The root cause will need to be identified and internal APIs are one possible source.
  3. First release: Developers need to be aware of new releases of the API in order to evalate potential impact and new possibilities
  4. First breaking change: Sooner or later, the API will have a breaking change (or a new version introduce). This may require an update in the API consuming solution and must be planned