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Comment by cjcenizal | Hacker News Reader

I love the rise in appreciation for a solid user experience for programmers these days. I've heard this referred to as DX (Developer Experience).

I have such a feeling of empowerment and productivity when I'm working with well-designed tools and APIs, with interfaces that fit into my mind the way the handle of a hammer fits perfectly into my hand.

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I would say the concept of DX is rising not just in terms of UI, but in the holistic sense. For example, Windows releasing the Ubuntu Bash and Microsoft Code in an attempt to make Windows a better DX environment.

Maybe it's because Microsoft (and others) feel developers can be powerful advocates for their platform.

People tend to ask developers they meet about what system, what software, what hardware they should use, and then trust that advice.

Windows had an excellent DX before WSL; Visual Studio in particular is considered a best-of-breed development tool and ecosystem, years ahead of anything that's available under Linux. Linux only won in the Web space because it's easier to deploy at massive scale because no licensing costs. It is not the easiest OS to develop for.

JetBrains IDE seems much more productive than Visual studio while at the same time being lightweight. So much so, lot of people find it worthwhile paying 300usd per year for Resharper, to get the same tools on Visual studio.

A good example of a DX initiative done right is the PHP framework Symfony2.6+. Using it is just ... heaven. Can't really describe it any other way. When ever I'm forced to use something different (Wordpress, or even worse, Drupal) I can not believe how much better Symfony ecosystem is. Not just the framework design ... but (especially!) the documentation.

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