Developer Platforms

A developer platform is infrastructure that other developers build on top of. APIs, SDKs, runtimes, services - the layer between your code and the hard problems you don’t want to solve yourself.

The value proposition is abstraction. Someone else handles authentication, storage, compute scaling, payment processing - you focus on your application logic. The platform takes a cut (money, lock-in, constraints) in exchange for not having to build and maintain that infrastructure yourself.

Good platforms share some properties:

Clear abstractions. The interface hides complexity without hiding so much that you can’t debug problems. You don’t need to understand the internals, but you can reason about behavior.

Predictable behavior. Same inputs, same outputs. Documented failure modes. No surprises when you scale up.

Escape hatches. When the abstraction doesn’t fit, there’s a way to drop down a level or work around the platform.

Developer experience as a feature. Documentation, error messages, tooling, examples. The friction of getting started matters.

The platform business is interesting because of network effects and lock-in. Once developers build on your platform, switching costs are high. This creates both opportunity (sticky customers) and risk (being locked in to someone else’s platform).

From the builder’s side, the challenge is balancing flexibility with simplicity. Too simple and you can’t handle real use cases. Too flexible and you’ve just exposed the underlying complexity without adding value.

The best platforms feel like they extend the language or environment - natural to use, powerful enough to be general, with guardrails that prevent common mistakes.