Company
Date Published
Author
Will O'Beirne
Word count
752
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

As a company building a remote development platform, Coder has implemented a dogfooding approach where its own engineers use the product to test and improve it. This approach has taught them valuable lessons about the importance of developer experience, functionality, and reliability. By using their solution to build themselves, they've discovered features that were essential for their own needs, such as "Dev URLs" for collaboration, and have been able to catch errors and release a more stable product. While there are costs associated with dogfooding, including chicken/egg problems and feature-flagging systems, the benefits far outweigh them, leading to better software quality and a platform that works for both customers and development teams.