STM stands for "Services, Tools, and Modules". The goal of STM (pronounced stem) is to provide a quick way to build a microservice architecture. STM is extremely opinionated in its approaches as the goal of it is to minimize the time spent in development and the time it takes to get to production. This requires sacrificing in particular areas to maximize agility. For example, STM's key focus will be around development in Node.js initially as Node.js offers development agility in the fact that it is the one language that can be used for frontend, backend, and devops.
DEX is an organization centered around Developer Experience and Development Agility. Like STM it is extremely opinionated in its approaches in order to increase the rate at which software can be developed and grown.
There are several core concepts that drive STM:
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Documentation Driven Services
Documentation is a key differentiator in develoment agility. Developers can be fast to create applications, but then that agility is silo'd into one developer. Documentation enables entire organizations and it should always exist.
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Centralize and Refactor everything
If you ever have to do anything more than once, then take the time to consider how that something can be done a thousand times over. In the end, you will be glad you did. Everything in this world is either unique or plentiful, and if it exists more than once then we should expect it to multiply.