Quoting Bryan Cantrill

Tools are the things we build that we don't ship - but that very much affect the artifact that we develop.

It can be tempting to either shy away from developing tooling entirely or (in larger organizations) to dedicate an entire organization to it.

In my experience, tooling should be built by those using it.

This is especially true for tools that improve the artifact by improving understanding: the best time to develop a debugger is when debugging!

— Bryan …

artifact build experience organization organizations ship softwareengineering tooling tools true