A question of clarit
[2023-04-26 09:34:21 AM] : A question of clarity on the pain points I should be hunting down
As a developer, my job is to solve pains for users. Other developers have the same job. In a world where a specific type of web developer is my audience, should I also be tracking the pains their users are facing?
For example, users HATE losing their data (strong pain point). But building resilient persistent applications is hard (solving that pain is painful)
If I can make these devs better at their job, by making them better at solving problems for their users, that's a tremendous value add. But it does feel a bit slippery-slopey.
1 Reply
[2023-04-26 11:28:52 AM] : Didn’t you already mention the concrete pain the developers face? “building resilient persistence applications is hard”.
If you found that pain by looking at user pain that your audience already knows and wants to solve, that is I think perfectly fine.
[2023-04-26 11:29:20 AM] : I’m very much new at this, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Hopefully someone more experienced will also chime in. :slightly_smiling_face:
[2023-04-26 05:54:23 PM] : if the devs users have a problem, but the devs are not aware of the users problems, then you can't really help them. i say stick to SS findings.
[2023-04-27 07:20:01 AM] : Safari is surfacing the pains, but they’re pretty vague. Optimistic UI is hard. Error handling is hard. Forms are hard. CI is hard. Fetching data with graphql without DOSing your database is hard.
I can write about any of that, but there’s a deeper layer of “why do devs even want to do this? What problem are they trying to solve”
Because sometimes the real cause of their pain is they’ve chosen a substandard approach, and I can teach them a better one
[2023-04-27 07:22:10 AM] : To borrow a Kent C Dodds metaphor, they’re punching themselves in the face every time they blink, and rather than teaching them to blink less often (How to eliminate unnecessary re-renders in a React application) maybe just stop punching yourself in the face (How to eliminate slow renders)
[2023-04-27 11:16:50 AM] : Jacob Paris I think you're on the right path, especially asking this question:
"why do devs even want to do this? "The answer to this isn't always right on the page, so your job is to find clues that lead you in the direction of what will resonate, not necessarily what's "right" Is there a specific context for the question you're asking?