Why CDEs should be prioritized before IDPs

Cloud development environments (CDEs) should be prioritized before internal developer portals (IDPs) to improve developer productivity and efficiency. CDEs focus on standardizing and automating the setup and management of development environments, while IDPs aim to organize a company's software ecosystem. Both tools have similar goals in terms of developer onboarding, self-service, and standardization but approach them differently. Optimizing development environments with CDEs can lead to significant productivity gains by minimizing administrative overhead and maximizing time spent in flow. Therefore, investing in CDEs alongside or even before IDPs is crucial for platform engineering efforts.