The Birth of Developer Avocados 🥑
…inducting software engineers into Developer Avocadocy
Software is eating the world. And it’s common knowledge that software engineers are at the core of this raving mad movement that’s taking communication, interaction, and work operations to the next level.
I mean, Google prides itself as an A.I first company. Let that sink in!
Developer Avocados? What the hell is that?
- Does this mean software developers are now incredible tasty & chewable substances? 🍰
- Do software developers frequently pick up the low hanging fruits? 🤔
- Is it a part of our diet?
These are questions that a lot of people will start asking with the proliferation of “Developer 🥑”, “Developer Avocados”, “Developer Avocados 🥑” on the Twitter bio of Developer Advocates across the world.
A Developer Advocate is someone whose primary responsibility is to make it easy for developers to use a platform.
Inception and Fight for the Revolution
, one of my favorite conference speakers and @apollographql super fan started the Developer Avocados 🥑 revolution.And she unknowingly broke the internet with < 160 characters. Developer Advocates across Microsoft, Google, NodeSource, GatsbyJS, Ionic, Twilio, Apollo and several other software companies have joined the movement.
The origin of Developer Advocados came from a typo. Are you kidding me? A freaking typo? Bruuhh! As crazy as this sounds, something immediately resonated within me. Majority of the inventions we enjoy today were birthed from accidental mistakes. Software engineers make mistakes while coding every single day. Mistakes are shipped with software every time! An engineer at Amazon once made a mistake and the internet was down for about 5 minutes.
However, mistakes spur us to build something better, faster, stronger, more secure and incredibly resilient.
Did you know that if you run
npm isntallinstead ofnpm installon your machine, your node modules still gets installed? Give glory to the guys at npm that factored in the art of making mistakes and still getting shit done! 🔥🔥
You are great at what you do today because of the plethora of mistakes you made in the past. In fact, you still make them now!
I consulted with my open source personality, hard-rock engineer self, and developer advocate identity and came to the conclusion for the reference definition of Developer Avocados!
Developer Avocados are developer advocates, developer evangelists, community engineers, and developer relations folks that embrace the power of making mistakes and wield it as a tool in making software development more accessible.
Join, Learn, Build & Make Mistakes
Sara has compiled a long twitter list of Developer Avocados 🥑. As a software engineer of over 4 years, I can boldly say that I have learned a lot in a few years by following several software engineers in the industry.
Follow the ladder and learn from this pool of crazy Developer Advocados making software accessible for everyone.
Still have no idea of what developer advocates do? I wrote the work of a developer evangelist three years ago.
Cheers to the relentless work of these folks writing quality documentation for software, travelling frequently, organizing and teaching at workshops, speaking at conferences, helping developers on twitter, stackoverflow.com, reddit, forums, slack channels, and crafting software products into really usable entities.
An Inclusive Community
While wandering on twitter a few months ago looking for the next best programming resource to consume, I found a gold mine. A Slack community of Developer Advocates. Damn!!!😱
Request an invite for the Slack channel if you are a Developer Avocado 🥑
Conclusion
If you are a developer advocate for a product or company or run a developer community? Feel free to comment under this post. Let’s get to know one another. The sum of us is greater than one of us!
We should all be Developer Avocados
Update - 24/06/2018: I just learned that
actually wrote a post on Developer Avocados several months ago, thus making her the Chief Originator of Developer Avocados. This is the original piece https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/2018/1/31/developer-avocados-the-good-kind-of-fatThanks Mary!!!
More where this came from
This story is published in Noteworthy, where thousands come every day to learn about the people & ideas shaping the products we love.
Follow our publication to see more stories featured by the Journal team.
