Finding the explanation

I have listened to a lot of people talking about finding your niche as a consultant, freelancer, authority business, soloist, startup, etc. One thing that comes up in many of the best ones is that when you immerse yourself in the group you want to serve you learn their language and when you talk to them they will tell you their problems, in their words.

Those words are important, their language is important and it is how you explain what you offer to them in a way that resonates with their understanding. This is my current journey with Nerves. I know the language of the Elixir community and BEAM world quite well and I think I speak and write it well enough. I get by. Now I am looking to go to embedded conferences and learn theirs. I have always been curious about the embedded world. I've always been fascinated by hardware. And now I need to find the right words for the value proposition of Nerves. I'm aware of what we can bring to the table, I'm learning about the problems and piece by piece I'm picking up the words, the language and the shape of things.

Most things do not sell on one single appeal. They sell on multiple ones. The glib way of selling LiveView is to say it means you don't have to write JavaScript. It is hyperbole, for most cases you will touch JavaScript. It also carries with it a lot of truth. Phoenix and LiveView have opted out of the majority of the JS ecosystem and offers alternatives to futzing around with Node, NPM and the churn factory. There is a true balm on a true pain for people that have dealt with fragile, rapidly decomposing JS deps and tools that churn into incompatibility every 6 months.

The more serious pitch is about simplifying your stack. Getting more iterations per unit of time. Time to market. Ease of rich live features. Both of these pitches matter. One is about addressing immediate pain and frustration, bringing soothing delight. The other is about being a solid defensible choice in the pragmatic and critical view.

Similarly with Nerves, it can be your choice for many reasons. Maybe you don't have an endless pool of talented C-developers. Maybe your development is very slow because the web framework is in C++ and you can't pick up web devs to do the work without segfaulting the entire device. Maybe Python on top of Raspberry Pi OS works okay but a pain to manage efficiently. Maybe your time to a new prototype is way longer because you can never really re-use anything.

You can start doing IoT with a web developer skillset. Don't kid yourself that it is the same though. There is a new culture, new terminology, new concerns, new priorities, new requirements to understand. I am trying my best to go into this humble, learn some stuff. Before I disrupt everything. Time to get more words. The right words.

You can reach me on the Fediverse where I'm @lawik@fosstodon.org or by responding to this email to lars@underjord.io.

Thank you for reading this. I appreciate you.