If not for a gazillion other reasons, a recent outage from Postman should remind us again why proper design decisions matter in devtools.
API workflows shouldn’t live in the cloud. A LOT of devtools shouldn’t live in the cloud. Some tools can’t work without it, all good. But a whole lot of them are there just because of some poor design choices.
Yet…
- No cloud? No outage.
- No cloud? No sync issues.
- No cloud? No data security gaps.
So why keep forcing it where it doesn’t belong?
And it’s not even just the cloud. Cloud is awesome for some stuff. SaaS-like designs are dragging devtools into the same trap.
As a matter of fact, devtools in general shouldn’t feel like SaaS platforms. Unless we’re going through app usage dashboards - tabs, and mouse actions are not built for devs.
Devtools should prioritize developer control, not just pay-per-seat subscriptions.
P.S. No need to send me Postman alternatives. I already work on building an awesome one, but chose not to promote it in the post.
SilentTiger•7h ago
kiselitza•5h ago
Pay-per-seat works well when no proper competition to go against it. What we built with http://voiden.md should be free forever, with monetization on plugins, but only the ones that introduce costs to the team.
The blessing was that the team was already profitable on another tool, and VC-independent, so nobody shoved some dumb design decisions down anyone's throat.