Rethinking devtools: Escaping the Cloud and SaaS trap

Just thinking out loud.

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 this post.