I wanted to write my first post about something that I've always tried to keep front-of-mind in my work.

If you develop software, it may seem obvious, but please remember the end user.

To explain what I mean, I'll start by saying that technology choices and controversy seem to come hand-in-hand.

I've seen development teams spend countless days arguing over whether they should use ReactJS or VueJS, Java or Python, AWS or GCP, and the list goes on.

I've even seen these arguments get quite heated. Some even go to the lengths of ranking programming language speeds in milliseconds to further their point.

In my opinion, there's a very important stakeholder whose often forgotten about during these debates - and that's the user.

And importantly, the user does not care.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that technology choices are unimportant, but I am saying that they're less important to an end user than they are to a developer (particularly when it comes to millisecond differences). It's not worth deliberating for any significant amount of time.

The user cares that:

• The product is functional.
• The product is easy-to-use.
• The product provides value.

The user does not care that:

• X technology was used over Y technology to develop the product.
• The product was built-from-scratch, rather than using open-source or off-the-shelf software.
• You wrote some really complex code.
• You used AI, crypto, or any other technology craze.
• The product uses the latest biometric authentication (they likely can't use it, or don't know how to!)

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In summary, try to remember the end user. If you're building software, then (most of the time) you're working for a company so that they can provide value to their customers. It's a difficult mould to break when you're used to coding as a hobby, but use your development time wisely, and put yourself in the user's shoes.

In addition to my ramblings, if you're interested in exploring approaches that prioritise the end user, I recommend reading into concepts such as the product engineer role, user-centric design and "value streams".

What do you do to keep the user front-of-mind in your work?