Strive for Simplicity

Shinae asks around to see where Strive for Simplicity makes the most impact at Readme, and uncovers something big about the power of APIs. Greg is still a tough egg to crack and Shinae still isn’t sure whether he’s telling her the truth about ReadMe’s most important value.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1942051/10097328

Transcript

Shinae Lee: 0:00

Hey, this is a series meant to be heard in order. If you haven't already, go back and listen, starting with Episode One Be the change you seek previously on values.

Gregory Koberger: 0:11

You know, I have a lot of ideas, but this is the one that like after seven years I'm still excited about and I haven't even written line of code like, I should plan on it. So why I started ReadMe

Marc Cuva: 0:19

If they're poorly documented, or if it's six months out of date, but it just might as well not exist, because like, no one will be able to figure out how to use it.

Kanad: 0:27

I'm still reeling from the two biggest cultural moments of my lifetime. The season seven finale of Scrubs and Rihanna reissuing Good Girl Gone Bad

Shinae Lee: 0:42

from ReadMe its values I'm Shinae Lee. ReadMe has six values. And in this six part investigative podcast, we're going to explore the company to figure out which readme value is the most important. Today we're investigating strive for simplicity. Last time we took a look at make things that just work. And after talking with Greg about the value and the beginning of readme, it started to become unclear whether Greg was telling the truth about the importance of the values. We know now that Be the change you seek allows readme employees to do work they're passionate about, and that make things that just work was instrumental in the way Greg started the company. But today's values strive for simplicity blows the case right open, because today we understand the power of API's, and therefore the power of readme. You heard a bit about Dave, in our first episode, Dave Reed, our head of sales came in to read me close to the beginning to start selling and creating a product that would work for huge companies. At the time, we already had a few of them using Read me, but our product didn't work perfectly for them, because it didn't have all of the features they needed. Now these companies use our enterprise product, and they've made huge businesses out of creating API's and documenting them on readme. So what is an API? And why are huge enterprises putting their trust in readme to make this better? I asked Dave,

Dave: 2:27

into the 90s and 2000. So much focus has been on users, people that log into software every day, and use the UI just like you or I do surfing the internet. Why read me, it's important as for technical users, that when somebody goes to use an API, they're not using the UI of the product, they're using a secondary way of interacting with it. But they're writing code to interact with the core application programmatically, and sort of getting the value or solving the problem they're looking to solve with the API with code. And why ReadMe is important is that we're a company that really takes that relationship serious.

Shinae Lee: 3:00

What Dave's saying here is that developers use API's via code, there's no button for them that says, go send tweet, they just have to know what commands to code in order to send requests in a way the API can understand. An example Dave gave later in our conversation was if you're a marketer for a restaurant chain, sending a promo email, and you want to add a module into the email that would let the reader call a lift to your restaurant from the email. If you just have the token, basically a password to lift API, it's very hard for you to do that. But what makes it simple is its documentation. Good documentation that teaches you have

Dave: 3:43

this is incredibly complicated to write and publish documentation. Right. And with ReadMe, it's not. So we created a tool that kind of gets out of your way, and makes it really easy, really easy to just get that core thing done, which is published and updated documentation quickly.

Shinae Lee: 3:57

So we know that when and documentation platform is simple to use, it allows API creators to create documentation in a simple way. But what happens when that well documented API gets into the hands of a developer. When I first met Kanad, a developer advocate he told me why he felt good working for a company like readme. And to illustrate, he told me the story of his first aha moment using an API. It was the 2016 election and he wanted to build a program that would let his community in Minneapolis easily find its nearest polling place. Use the Google Maps and Twilio API's to do it.

Kanad: 4:37

It was like a huge lightbulb moment for me because, you know, it made me immediately appreciate what API's can do for regular people. They allow them to just build these incredible things without being an expert in you know, that subject matter. I was able to take advantage of the Twilio and Google Maps API's and build this SMS polling place finder but I didn't have to be an exporting Cartography or SMS and codings. Betty Crocker gives you the ability to make some bomb-ass brownies. But you don't have to know the ratios of baking powder and cocoa and flour and whatnot. Like, you just have to bring some eggs and the packet of like brownie mix and you're there. The power

Shinae Lee: 5:18

of an API lies in its simplicity. I know we still have three values left to investigate on the podcast. But this one is already making a really strong case for its importance among our lineup. ReadMe can help simplify things on three levels for the person creating the API documentation for the person using the API and reading that snazzy readme made documentation and for the person at the end using the software made using that API. So in the end, that's a lot of people who are affected. Okay, hi, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? I'm pretty good. I brought my new revelation to Greg. So I basically had this whole revelation when I was recording the episode, and talking to a bunch of people at ReadMe. And I didn't expect it. But I saw a really strong case for the most important value. Because if you think about it, what gives an API power. And what makes them so incredible is their simplicity. So like any mediocre developer can use an API to do pretty much anything that they couldn't do themselves. Or, at least it's way easier than if they were to do it from scratch. So making API's and API Doc's simple. And making them accessible is the very thing that makes an API great. So is this our most important value,

Gregory Koberger: 6:48

I think it's a really important value, I sometimes wonder if it's, you know, not the most important or the one that we should be starting with, because you can't get out of nowhere have a really simple API, there's a lot of stuff that goes into it beforehand to get there. So sometimes I wonder if striving for simplicity is more of a second order value, or if it's more of a cure to a symptom as opposed to the the root of of what we're trying to do.

Shinae Lee: 7:14

So if this one isn't really like, top importance, there's something that I'm missing or do you know of another one that is where you've just got err on the side of whimsy polished the product and always do what's human left, so not a ton?

Gregory Koberger: 7:34

Who those are my favorites though, I have a good feeling about at least one of those.

Shinae Lee: 7:40

Even a value as consequentialist strive for simplicity doesn't look like a top contender for most important, at least with Greg, which honestly is kind of wild to me. It's such an important value that impacts so many people, but which one this could be more important. Next time on values