I just read this post on the Coding Horror blog and it struck a chord:
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.
We certainly eat our own dogfood here at MJT Net Ltd. Macro Scheduler was written to solve a pain I had at a previous job many years ago, and I still use it day in day out. Not only is it used for automating various business processes within the company, it is also used for creating small tools and for building parts of other projects.
But what struck me most about the coding horror article was this SawStop video:
It’s an impressive video. Perhaps the reason it struck a chord with me is that my father is a very keen woodworker and has a workshop full of very dangerous machinery which makes me wince every time I step inside. For some reason all I can think of when I watch him work is which limb is going to fly off first!
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.
Now, THAT is eating your own dogfood!
