In software circles, dogfooding refers to the practice of using your own products. It was apparently popularized by Microsoft:
The idea originated in television commercials for Alpo brand dog food; actor Lorne Greene would tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it's so good that he feeds it to his own dogs. In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled "Eating our own Dogfood" challenging him to increase internal usage of the product.
Buried deep in Eric Sink's post Yours, Mine and Ours is perhaps the ultimate example of the power of dogfooding.
If you'll indulge me briefly, I'd like to tell you what I
think is the best dogfooding story ever. However, it's not a software story.
It's a woodworking story.The primary machine tool in any well-equipped woodshop is a
table saw. Basically, it's a polished cast iron table with a slot through
which protrudes a circular saw blade, ten inches in diameter. Wood is cut by
sliding it across the table into the spinning blade.A table saw is an extremely dangerous tool. My saw can cut
a 2-inch thick piece of hard maple with no effort at all. Frankly, it's a tool
which should only be used by someone who is a little bit afraid of it. It
should be obvious what would happen if a finger ever came in contact with the
spinning blade. Over 3,000 people each year lose a finger in an accident with
a table saw.A guy named Stephen Gass has come up with an amazing
solution to this problem. He is a woodworker, but he also has a PhD in
physics. His technology is called Sawstop.
It consists of two basic inventions:
- He has a sensor which can detect the difference in
capacitance between a finger and a piece of wood.
- He has a way to stop a spinning table saw blade within
1/100 of a second, less than a quarter turn of rotation.The videos of this product are amazing. Slide a piece of
wood into the spinning blade, and it cuts the board just like it should. Slide
a hot dog into the spinning blade, and it stops instantly, leaving the
frankfurter with nothing more than a nick.Here's the spooky part: Stephen Gass tested his product on
his own finger! This is a guy who really wanted to close the distance between
him and his customers. No matter how much I believed in my product, I think I
would find it incredibly difficult to stick my finger in a spinning table saw
blade.
The creator actually did stick his own finger in a SawStop on camera, apparently on the Discovery Channel show Time Warp, but I can't locate any web video of it. There is a video of the sawstop in action on YouTube, using a hotdog in place of an errant digit. Personally, I find this demonstration no less effective than an actual finger.
Does it work? Yes, but it still has unavoidable limitations based on the laws of physics:
The bottom line is that this saw cuts you about 1/16" for every foot per second that you're moving. If you hit the blade while feeding the wood you're likely to get cut about 1/16" or less. If you hit the blade while you're falling you'll likely get a 3/16" deep cut instead of multiple finger amputation. If you hit it while pitching a baseball for the major leagues the injury will be even worse.
Dogfooding your own code isn't always possible, but it's worth looking very closely at any ways you can use your own software internally. As Mr. Gass proves, nothing exudes confidence like software developers who are willing to stick their own extremities into the spinning blades of software they've written.
Update: I found this quote from Havoc Pennington rather illustrative.
It would be wonderful discipline for any software dev team serious about Linux 'on the desktop' (whatever that means) to ban their own use of terminals. Of course, none of us have ever done this, and that explains a lot about the resulting products.
[advertisement] In charge of a mountain of Windows servers? PA Server Monitor to the rescue! Download the Free Trial! |
Read More...
[Source: Coding Horror - Posted by Kishore Vengala]
No comments:
Post a Comment