I have been obsessed with DevEx since before it was cool. I waited over 10 years to make this obsession public. This next obsession has had to wait less than 2, which I guess is an improvement.
I've been using a mental framework that I like to call DAX: Developer & Agent experience.
Over a medium-term horizon, software will continue to be built as a collaboration between humans and agents. So when I talk about DAX, I'm talking about three things:
- I need to teach the agent some grit. It should have a harness that lets it achieve an outcome I define, with multiple levels of feedback loops built in. It should keep going until it achieves the outcome, and can prove that the outcome has been achieved.
- I need to give myself and fellow engineers the right tools to build such a harness, orchestrate agents and verify that they aren't lying.
- I still need to pretend that my job is needed, so for the times that I do not wish to delegate to an agent, I should continue to have a frictionless experience.
The cool thing is, most improvements to the agent experience lead to an improvement to the developer experience, and vice versa.