So what is a developer experience anyway?

2020-07-17

Discussion on all things related to the experience that a developer has with development tools and frameworks.

Feedback on Avalon CTP?

If you've downloaded and played around with the Avalon CTP release would you be willing to share...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 01/28/2005

Ideas for talks at upcoming conferences?

I was just in a meeting with the Visual Studio UX (user experience) team. Someone brought up the...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 01/20/2005

Avalon November CTP is available for download

Most participants who come in for an API study on Avalon ask me where they can get access to the...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 01/14/2005

Attributes and API usability (again!)

I've been running another usability study on an API that makes heavy use of attributes and have made...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 10/08/2004

Parameter naming and the Google test

Brad has a post on choosing parameter names for overloaded methods which brings to mind a recent...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 08/24/2004

System.Net usability study

I'm running a study this week on the Beta 1 version of the System.Net namespace. In addition to the...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 08/16/2004

Whyline

Brad Myers from CMU was here today giving a talk which included some details of the Whyline system,...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 08/04/2004

Virtual properties anyone?

As part of the WinFX review team, I regularly review APIs for usability issues. One thing that we as...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 07/30/2004

VS automation samples

I've been asked for suggestions for a list of VS automation samples that would help solve tricky...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 07/14/2004

This scares me!

Aleksei Guzev was scared by my last post on readability vs writability. I think what might have...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 07/06/2004

Readability vs Writability

Jay has a great post on readability vs writability. It's really important to take this into account...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 07/02/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions

Now that I've finished posting the series of articles on using the cognitive dimensions to evaluate...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/24/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions - domain correspondence

This is the last in the series I've been posting about how to use the cognitive dimensions framework...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/17/2004

Attributes and API usability revisited

I posted a query last week requesting feedback on the use of attributes in an API and their effect...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/12/2004

Can I see your code?

Scott Klemmer, a graduate student at the Institute of Design at UC Berkeley emailed me last week to...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/11/2004

Windows mobile devices and API usability

The mobile devices team has just completed an API usability review and found some interesting...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/06/2004

Attributes and API usability

I'm in the middle of running an API study this week with an API that makes heavy use of attributes...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/06/2004

Carlos Perez on API usability

Here's an interesting post on API usability.

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 05/05/2004

Psychology of Programming Workshop

Another paper that caught my attention at the recent Psychology of Programming workshop was...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 04/27/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions - Role Expressiveness

For each user goal that your API supports, describe how easy it is to tell from reading the code...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 04/23/2004

Psychology of Programming Workshop

It's been well over a month since I last posted. I've been away for a few weeks on vacation and...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 04/16/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions - consistency

Consistency in an API allows users to make use of what they have learned about how one part of the...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 03/17/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions - API viscosity

API viscosity measures the resistance to change of code written using a particular API. For each...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 03/10/2004

The latest edition of the PPIG (Psychology of Programming Interest Group) newsletter is out...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 03/03/2004

ObjectSpaces and usability

Here's an interesting post about the effect that a few changes to a language syntax can have on a...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 03/01/2004

Joel Spolsky on programming language usability

A colleague forwarded me this link to Joel Spolsky's blog posting on API and programming language...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/27/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions - API Elaboration

API elaboration describes the extent to which a developer can and must extend the API in order to...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/27/2004

Usability and prototypes

It's been a while since I last posted and the main reason for my silence has been that I've been...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/27/2004

API Penetrability

A recent usability study highlighted some issues related to API penetrability (you'll find a posting...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/13/2004

Using the Cognitive Dimensions - API Elaboration

This dimension provides a measure of the extent to which developers must and can extend the API in...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/10/2004

Using the Cognitive Dimensions - Penetrability

Penetrability refers to the extent to which a developer must understand the underlying...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/03/2004

Premature commitment in action

I just finished up an API usability study, during which one of the issues that came up was due to...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 02/02/2004

OK/Cancel

I just got forwarded this link to a pretty amusing and interesting usability site:...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 01/30/2004

Why profile users and not tasks?

I was recently asked to describe why we had decided to profile user characteristics via the...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 01/28/2004

Using the cognitive dimensions - premature commitment

After a long absence, here's the next installment in a series on how to use the cognitive dimensions...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 01/22/2004

I'm moving...

From now on, instead of posting on blogs.gotdotnet.com, I'll be posting to...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 12/22/2003

Using the Cognitive Dimensions - Progressive Evaluation

Here's the next in the series of posts for using the Cognitive Dimensions framework... For each user...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 12/22/2003

Using the Cognitive Dimensions - Work Step Unit

Continuing my series of posts on using the cognitive dimensions framework. I have a few to catch up...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 12/22/2003

Should collection based properties be read only?

An interesting question came up today on the issue of making all collection based properties read...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 12/08/2003

Using the cognitive dimensions - working framework

The next installment in using the cognitive dimensions... For each user goal that the API...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 12/03/2003

System.Xml or System.XML?

Brad Abrams recently asked me if I knew of any research that investigated whether or not mixed case...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 12/03/2003

We just finished up a usability study investigating the new Sidebar and Tile APIs. We asked...

Author: Steven Clarke Date: 11/26/2003

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So what is a developer experience anyway?

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