ALTERNATE UNIVERSE DEV

Enjoy the Vue

Episode 79: Did You Enjoy the Vue, Ash?

This Episode is sponsored by Cloudflare Workers

Join us today as we talk to Ash Ryan Arnwine (developer experience leader for DataStax) about Getting Started Guides. Ash takes us through his experience with Vue, and how the guides in Vue 1 were the North Star for him when he was working with Adobe Creative Cloud. We discuss the challenges in migrating from different versions, and the downsides to Getting Started videos in place of text. Find out how keeping Ash's four-year-old daughter from sleeping is the highest praise the Vue team has received, and what each of the team feels is better: prescriptive or flexible guides. From picking the correct level to pitch your instructions at, to the different types of people defined as “developers”, you don’t want to miss out on this information-packed episode!

Key Points From This Episode:

  • Welcome to Ash Ryan Arnwine, developer experience leader for DataStax and previously, Adobe Creative Cloud.
  • Ash’s introduction to Vue and why it became the North Star for thinking about writing documentation. 
  • What makes the path from getting started to building an app clear. 
  • Finding the balance between prescriptive and “sprinkling in some HTML” in Vue. 
  • How Vue has a background framework beyond the beginner’s instructions.
  • The importance of being able to access the full app code on GitHub.
  • Picking the level of developer that your Getting Started Guide caters to (sometimes the middle-ground is the worst place to be).
  • Why you need to maintain your Getting Started Guide.
  • How to highlight important information that people might skip when reading the Getting Started Guide. 
  • The challenges of migrating from Vue 2 to Vue 3, and communicating it to users.
  • Why it’s crucial to make a roadmap of where the app is going.
  • How Vue’s completely honest self-appraisal won Ash over. 
  • Why videos are less appealing than documents about Getting Started. 
  • The naming conventions for Vue.
  • Creating a community to talk about “software things” in different places. 
  • How to contact Ash.
  • Discover this week’s picks from each of the team!

Tweetables:

“For a long time, I think Vue sort of became, in some ways, a North star for me personally, when thinking about documentation, and how do you orient somebody into a completely new technology.” — @ashryan_io [0:02:12]

“One thing that I've learned over time with just in leading developer relations and developer experience is that oftentimes, it's the sample code that turns into the most popular resource.” — @ashryan_io [0:25:41]

“Oftentimes, I think that the imperative is just like help people get started, help people get started, and we don't get a chance to step back and think, 'Okay, who are the people? What are they getting started doing?” — @ashryan_io [0:29:59]

“Developers are not a monolith.” — @ashryan_io [0:33:44]

"I think that when pondering developer experience, broadly, one of the things that is important to get to and be able to offer, but often isn't there at the very beginning is some sort of insight into the future, in terms of where things are going.” — @ashryan_io [0:46:19]

“Today, there's like so many awesome resources to learn. It's almost too much, right?” — @ashryan_io [0:55:34]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Special Guest: Ash Ryan Arwine.

Sponsored By:

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