The Empathic Side of Development

Empathy has been a hot topic lately, and its relation to software is no exception. This chapter will discuss how to use empathy to develop a better CLI. Empathy-driven CLI development is done with consideration of the output and errors that are written and the clarity and reassurance it may give the user. Written documentation that takes an empathetic approach also provides users with an effortless way to get started, while help and support are readily available for users when they need it.

This chapter will give examples of how to rewrite errors in a way that users may easily understand, not just by being clearer that an error occurred but also how and where (with debug and traceback information), which can be provided with a --verbose flag and detailed logging. It is very important to provide logs for users, and this implementation will be described when discussing debug and traceback information. Users can also feel more reassured with the help...