Barefoot Development

I ran into this term “barefoot developer”, coined by Maggie Appleton on the Local first conference in 2024.

In essence it means someone who has enough programming knowledge to build his or her own tools. For themselves, and for a small community around them. To not be too reliant on the large software builders for tools. But to have some capability of building your own tools.

While I suspect putting the term ‘barefoot developer’ on my LinkedIn would get me some weird looks, I do wholeheartedly celebrate the concept of someone who builds tools for themselves. Low-key, non-perfect, simple programmers. Programmers not intimidated by hacker news perfectionists. Programmers simply wishing to build a simple site, a simple script, or a tiny app. Just for themselves and a few around them.