Since the dawn of the web, it has done one thing better than anything medium that came before it:

Fandom.

The internet is for fans. People will write hundreds thousands of words about the stuff they love. These are comments, blogs, discussion forum posts, chats.

They’ll enact flamewars, they’ll start beef, they’ll write impassioned defenses.

This is true for books and television shows, and it’s also true for developer tools.

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Users identify with their tools

When a tool changes the course of your career, you have feelings about it. You want others to know about how cool it is. You want to defend it from challengers.

When you’re in love, you want the world to know.

And tools can earn love.

I’ve spent my career dealing with the consequences of this fact. I been paid to don flamesuits, wading into nuclear conflicts whose roots were simple: someone badly depended upon a tool, and felt it was under threat.

As a field, developer tools has a terrible relationship to this fact. Tools often earn their fandoms by accident, and lose those fandoms just as accidentally.

But armed with a clear picture of the territory where developer love is earned, you can do better. You can actively, deliberately steward your fandom:

  • Understanding how what you build creates career impact for developers
  • Measuring where your product is falling short of your goals
  • Teaching developers to be more formidable versions of themselves
  • Factilitating peer learning, multiplying the reach of your product beyond what your team could do alone

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None of this work really ends

Like any relationship, your commitment to this work is open-ended. The road is long, and you’ll have to evolve your stewardship as you grow, as your product changes, as new entrants join the market.

It can feel a little daunting.

On the other hand: isn’t knowing the territory so much better than renting a T-Shirt cannon and hoping for the best?

There’s no single right way to do this. What matters is being deliberate about the success you share with the developers who rely on you. Stay curious, stay engaged, and keep trying to change your space for the better.

Developers don’t need perfection. They just want backup they can trust in a complex, ever-changing field.

Book an intro call

I know: it’s a lot to think about. If you want backup figuring out how to start or regroup, I’m here to talk about it.