View source for use what you make

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'''<dfn>use what you make</dfn>''' is an IndieWeb [[principle]] that encourages [[creators]] to use the applications, tools, libraries, code, designs, documentation that they create, in particular on their personal website, and the counterpart of the [[make what you need]] principle. The phrasing of this principle was inspired by this quote:

<blockquote style="">Build what you need. Use what you build.<cite style="display:block;text-align:right">John Seely Brown quoted at eLearning 2015[https://twitter.com/slamteacher/status/568821669277487104]</cite></blockquote>

On the IndieWeb, “use what you make” means using your creations on your <em>personal site</em> as an aspect of your <em>primary online identity</em>, day to day.

== Why ==
'''Clearer perspective.''' Whether code, UX, design, or content, there is an aspect of depending on your creations personally yourself, beyond just testing a project you’re working on, that changes how you see your creations, their flaws, and what to focus on next.

'''Prioritization. Fix more important problems first'''. When you use what you make, you empathize as a user and fix the important problems first. You see and feel the impact of problems in what you have built, and in particular feel the difference between minor problems and major problems, thus helping you prioritize fixing the more important problems.

'''Fix most visible problems first.''' By using what you build as your personal identity on the public web, when there are visible problems, you will feel self-conscious about it, and strongly motivated to fix them quickly.

'''Faster iteration. Fix the more important problems faster'''. Using what you make helps motivate you to fix the important problems faster.

'''If not you, then who? [should bother using your stuff]''' If you're not willing to use your creation on your own primary personal website, why should anyone else use it on their primary personal website?

'''Creations tend to break (stay broken), when their creators don't use them.''' In general it is a good idea to use code that the author is using themselves. Those are less likely to be broken.

== How to ==
Using what you make, has several required components, <em>one</em> of which is actually using the thing, but the other is the essential '''making''' part of use what you make:
# '''active creation''' - whether code, UX, interactive/visual/graphic design, being an active [[creator]]
# '''use of''' what you create (e.g. by your company, on your company's site, your club's site, etc.)
# '''personal''' - use of that creation - you yourself <em>personally</em> using your creation for your own personal uses - it's not (just) a job use (i.e. that you can shut off when you go home), it's a personal use.
# '''identity''' - use of that creation in what you identify as your <em>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_self self]</em>. The act of creation alters an aspect of the public "self" of the creator. On the web, this means use of that creation actively on your personal website that you primarily use to identify yourself to others. I.e. not on a test site, nor a hobby site, nor an occasional use site, but your ''primary'' personal site and thus as part of your '''primary identity''' on the web.

== IndieWeb Examples ==
In rough order of when IndieWeb community members started using at least some part of what they build, using their own primary web identity presence with their own domain.
=== Tantek ===
{{t}} uses personal publishing software [[Falcon]] he wrote, including its open source functions in [[CASSIS]] live on his own site [http://tantek.com/ tantek.com] since 2010-01-01.
* He often deploys and tests [[CASSIS]] updates on his own site as a final live test before committing them to the cassis github repo, figuring if its going to break in production, he'd rather it break first on his site, than someone else's site who is depending on CASSIS.
 
=== Kartik Prabhu ===
{{kartikprabhu}} uses his website code [[Bundle]] on his site [https://kartikprabhu.com kartikprabhu.com] since sometime in 2013

=== Dmitri Shuralyov ===
{{ds}} uses his [https://github.com/shurcooL/issuesapp issue tracker] on his personal website.
He uses it as the [https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/issues/github.com/shurcooL/issuesapp/...?state=all canonical issue tracker] for the issue tracker itself, as well as to drive his [https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/blog blog] ([https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/blog?issuesapp=1 source]), and a list of [https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/idiomatic-go idiomatic Go] suggestions ([https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/idiomatic-go/entries source]).

=== capjamesg ===
{{jamesgoca}} uses code he wrote:

* a [[webmention]] endpoint he built to accept all incoming webmentions.
* his [[Micropub]] client to post content to his site.
* the [[IndieWeb Search]] engine he is building to answer questions he has about the IndieWeb.

He uses his own [https://github.com/shurcooL/notificationsapp notification tracker] on his personal site to read all his [https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/notifications notifications]. Notifications come from GitHub and additional sources.

=== Jae Lo Presti ===
{{777.tf}} uses a [https://sr.ht/~jae/Overengine/ custom blog engine] on her website in an effort to learn some new technologies. It is made with some degree of compatibility with [[Hugo]] in mind.

She also uses this blog engine on other websites she owns, as the deployment is extremely trivial and customization is at the center of it.

* add yourself...

== Limitations ==
* Beware of this trap: "only the people who wrote it can reliably use it" that OpenID fell into per [https://twitter.com/elforesto/status/976177015958261762 this twitter thread]

== Perspectives ==
* <span id="Posts"><span id="background">2010-07-22</span></span> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/Throwdown
* http://tantek.com/2010/200/t3/fsws-coders-challenge-use-your-code-publish-your-site

* "Is its creator living and breathing it in his day-to-day online life? If so, awesome, if not, yawn." - [[User:Tantek.com|Tantek]] 2013-01-03 11:05 (PST) (originally posted as a [https://plus.google.com/108890400948483542545/posts/6goeBwAR1d9 comment on a Google+ post]).

* "if web software creators themselves don't have a personal domain they use on the web then the web software is categorically untrustworthy."  (speaking to the unfortunate demise of [[Open Photo]], e.g. on Barnaby's site, and the screenshots on there that he'd linked to from [[patterns/note-list#Documented_Examples]] & [[patterns/note#Documented_Examples]]) {{t}} 2014-05-12 in IRC

* If I make software for <nowiki>[someone else]</nowiki>, am I ever going to rely on it? Unlikely <br/>If I make software which solves my own problems in a useful way, might others find it useful? Much more likely. - [[User:Waterpigs.co.uk|Barnaby Walters]] ([http://indiewebcamp.com/irc/2013-08-21/line/1377126915 2013-08-21 in iRC])

* I have a higher tolerance for my own stupidly designed interfaces than <nowiki>[another person]</nowiki> would, but at some point I'm going to get frustrated by inefficiencies in my interface and make it better for me, which then makes it better for everyone. - [[User:Aaronparecki.com|Aaron Parecki]] ([http://indiewebcamp.com/irc/2013-08-21/line/1377127086 2013-08-21 in IRC])

* https://twitter.com/zeldman/status/925117550089736192
** "“Solving only your specific problems will result in lighter, easier-to-understand code.” @rachelandrew #aeasf" [https://studio.zeldman.com/ @zeldman] October 30, 2017

== Metaphors ==
=== eat what you cook ===
[[eat what you cook]] was created as a metaphor replacement for [[selfdogfood]].

=== live in your ideas ===
It’s not enough to merely have ideas, a creator must inhabit them as they do their home:
<blockquote style="">Metaphorically speaking, a person's ideas must be the building he lives in - otherwise there is something terribly wrong. <cite style="display:block;text-align:right">Søren Kierkegaard, introduction to Provocations</cite></blockquote>

== FAQ ==
=== Unverifiable commits ===
''What about sites that are running non-open-source software (no way to directly verify commits)?''

A: Even web sites running software that is either little or not at all open sourced can still be analyzed for what features they use in terms of :
* outward visual appearance and user interface
* external notifications (e.g. [[PuSH]] and [[webmention]] behaviors)

Thus even if specific code commits are not transparently visible, there are plenty of other direct and indirect sources of evidence for creative (code, UX, design) changes, and thus the create/use pairing can still be verified to some extent.

== See Also ==
* [[make what you need]]
* Software example: [[microblog.pub]]’s home page is running the software itself.
* [[test in production]]