Why we’re building Enki
TL;DR: Most professional developers want to keep getting better at what they do. Current continuous learning options either take too much time or are inefficient. This is a problem for both developers and companies. To help solve this, we’re building Enki: the first engaging learning tool for professional developers.
Update: Product Hunt featured us today!
Developers are underserved
In my last company, we worked hard to build a great work environment for our 50 developers. For example, we invested in their learning and development, to maximize their long term potential. But the only things available seemed to be books and video courses, which took so much time to get through that they were rarely used. Our team felt frustrated by the options available.
We weren’t the only ones with this problem. Now at Enki, we’ve talked to over a thousand developers in detail over the last few months as we’ve been building our product. Over 85% felt it’s important to be learning things every day to become a better developer. And yet 80% of them felt their companies did not do enough to help them with this. This is a wake up call for many companies that build technology, because a frustrated developer is a developer ready to move on.
One clue as to the core of the problem: well over 50% suggested that a lack of time is holding them back from learning more frequently. But why is this?
So much to do, so little time
We are becoming busier and our jobs more competitive than ever. The concept of “free time” exists for few and far between. This is particularly true for software developers, who always have more bugs to fix, more tests to write, more features to implement, and more code to refactor. On top of that, many developer teams are under-staffed, because of the shortage of qualified candidates.
Development work can also get pretty addictive. It’s hard for passionate developers to stop coding when they are in the middle of an interesting task. It’s better to finish with all the context and related code fresh in your head, rather than coming back the next day and having to go through it again.
Because of all the above, time is a scarce resource for developers. They often have a few minutes here and there, between tasks: while waiting for some long end-to-end tests to run, or during their coffee break. But it’s much harder to book long blocks of time to read a chapter of a book or go through a full course online.
That’s why most learn just enough to solve the problems that they face at work as they go along, by talking to colleagues or searching online on tools like StackOverflow.
Traits of 10X developers
For the best developers, this is not enough. They stay sharp in topics which they’ll be using in the future, or which are tangential to what they’re doing today. They’re always on the hunt for tips or tricks to be more efficient. They regularly refer to the best books for examples, guidance and advice. They seek to master knowledge of their day to day tools and dev environment. They don’t just learn while solving problems day to day. They learn proactively in order to avoid those problems from happening in the first place.
The problem is that doing this takes a lot of discipline, patience and organization. This isn’t easy. We’re a passive, push-button generation, lazier than ever. Tasks that take more effort than tapping a button now feel like too much work. But the reality is that if you’re not doing these things, you’re falling behind as a developer.
It’s noisy over there
As for casual learning, there are some existing tools to discover and learn new things as a developer. The most popular include Reddit (r/programming), Hacker News, Twitter, and a few others.
The problem with these tools is that they are very general, and designed to optimize engagement, not education. You often stumble on things that are definitely relevant to learn, and sometimes pretty advanced. But this is only a small fraction of content out there. The rest is either soft knowledge, pure entertainment, or knowledge that is only relevant short-term.
Building a solution
Busy professionals need more guidance, more automation, and a more personalized experience to help develop good learning habits. We believe that technology and well-designed products can help solve this.
To that end, I’m excited to announce that we’re building Enki with my cofounder Bruno Marnette and our founding team. Our goal is to make it effortless and time-efficient for developers to learn important things every day. So how exactly are we going to do this?
Always with you
Everyone understands the value of learning a little bit every day, but it’s hard to turn this intention into a habit. It needs to be simple, quick, and on-the-go. We are embracing the mobile device to do this, allowing you to learn no matter where you are and how much time you have. During your commute, when waking up, at home relaxing, or when your code is compiling — you got it.
Smart Bits of Knowledge
You can’t show much text or code on a single mobile screen. Instead of long lectures or courses, Enki breaks down the content into small tips, tricks, hacks, gotchas, and other atoms of applicable knowledge. This is easier to consume and more appropriate for those who already know the basics and want to level up incrementally.
Killing boredom
Most active learning options today don’t just take a long time to go through and get value from. Frankly, they’re often pretty damn boring. We’re going to change this. We have engaging challenges as part of the learning experience. We focus on design, copy and game elements which result in an intrinsic motivation to engage and get to the point where you’ve learnt something valuable that day.
Building the community
We already have some fantastic developer advisors, investors and contributors who are helping to build Enki, including Bob Ippolito, Roger Dickey, Suranga Chandratillake, Todd Moto, Dan Abramov, Bryce Case Jr, Ken Wheeler, Dmitry Baranovskiy and Dave Sag. Our prototype was tested by a diverse group of developers. This includes experienced devs at companies like Google and Facebook, but also many open source hackers and freelancers.
Once you try the product, we’d also love to hear your feedback. In particular, how we should teach each of our topics better, and how we can achieve our long-term goal of making technical knowledge a lot more organized and accessible.
You can request an invite to Enki here. Since we want to provide a personalized experience, we’ll be inviting people incrementally over the next few weeks.
