Make Something Developers Want

Lee Robinson argues that developer-facing products win developer adoption by following five practices: embracing open source, offering a free tier, providing excellent documentation, offering support from developers, and taking part in existing communities. Experienced developers favor open source because they have been burned by closed "black box" tools or by previously open tools that changed licenses or closed their source code, while newer developers value the transferable skills it builds. On free tiers, the article says developers want to try products with minimal friction and would rather start self-serve than go through months of sales negotiations, even when buying enterprise software. The article also says good documentation should teach beginners progressively while staying useful to experts, and that community engagement should be a long-term, non-transactional effort in spaces developers already use.