What's Happening?
Macquarie Group has launched a new tool called Dexd, designed to improve the developer experience for its engineers. Unveiled by Brent Burgess, Head of Public Cloud, at the AWS re:Invent conference in Las
Vegas, Dexd is a developer experience daemon installed on every engineer's laptop. It aims to provide a consistent setup and templates to help engineers build software efficiently. Dexd is based on Microsoft's Dev Containers and offers a full-featured development environment. It includes a visually appealing dashboard that uses a traffic-light system to ensure engineers have the correct setup, such as SSH keys and access to necessary tools. If configurations are incorrect, Dexd can either fix them automatically or guide engineers to the appropriate documentation. This tool is expected to reduce onboarding time for engineers and facilitate their movement between teams within the company.
Why It's Important?
The introduction of Dexd is significant as it addresses the complexities engineers face in setting up their development environments. By streamlining this process, Macquarie Group aims to enhance productivity and accelerate the delivery of business outcomes. This tool is particularly important for a company like Macquarie, which operates across diverse global markets and relies heavily on cloud infrastructure. With over 70% of its applications hosted in public clouds like AWS and GCP, ensuring that engineers can quickly adapt to different projects and teams is crucial. Dexd not only reduces the time spent on setup but also empowers engineers to focus on innovation and delivery, potentially leading to faster deployment of new features and services.
What's Next?
Macquarie Group plans to continue expanding Dexd's capabilities by incorporating enhancements from its engineering users. The group will also publish more details about Dexd on the Macquarie Engineering Blog. As Dexd becomes more integrated into the company's operations, it is likely to influence how other organizations approach developer experience and onboarding processes. The success of Dexd could lead to its adoption by other companies seeking to improve their engineering workflows and cloud operations.
