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GeneralRe: CCC of Today Friday 13th.... Pin
super13-Dec-19 0:12
professionalsuper13-Dec-19 0:12 
GeneralRe: CCC of Today Friday 13th.... Pin
Randor 13-Dec-19 0:16
professional Randor 13-Dec-19 0:16 
GeneralRe: CCC of Today Friday 13th.... Pin
super13-Dec-19 0:19
professionalsuper13-Dec-19 0:19 
GeneralRe: CCC of Today Friday 13th.... Pin
Randor 13-Dec-19 0:34
professional Randor 13-Dec-19 0:34 
GeneralRe: CCC of Today Friday 13th.... Pin
Herman<T>.Instance13-Dec-19 0:45
Herman<T>.Instance13-Dec-19 0:45 
GeneralRe: CCC of Today Friday 13th....SOLUTION Pin
Herman<T>.Instance13-Dec-19 2:09
Herman<T>.Instance13-Dec-19 2:09 
GeneralDogfooding is hard Pin
honey the codewitch12-Dec-19 21:07
mvahoney the codewitch12-Dec-19 21:07 
GeneralRe: Dogfooding is hard Pin
kalberts13-Dec-19 6:29
kalberts13-Dec-19 6:29 
Yes, dogfooding is both hard and valuable.

But don't overestimate it. It easily ends up as an echo chamber. "It works well for myself, then it must be perfect for the world!" I worked in one company where we hired students on short-term contracts to do both robustness and usability tests: After six months or so, they had learned to think along the same paths as the developers. They did "the right things", and reported fewer problems. We had to bring in new ones twice a year to test and evaluate the products the way users would do it, not the way developers do it.

I consider dogfooding to be the major reason for the failure of many open software projects attempting to compete against commercial end user applications: They tend to do dogfooding only. The products work fine if you are a competent software developer, but you simply can't tell an everyday secretary or dog breeder or truck driver to specify a regex for the search. Not even to use a command shell limited to 7-bit ASCII and you have to escape a lot of characters (escape characters in particular). And so on. The dogfood that pleases the developer dosen't necessarily please the customer.

One story, from the early 1980s: This office automation software, NOTIS[^], was based on an OS where users had a flat set of files - not uncommon in those days. Unix ideas were spreading, and developers were eager to offer a hierarchical file system. So they created an archive system were documents were put in folders, in drawers, in cabinets. From one of the major customers, the University of Oslo Publishing house, we heard that one of editors had found a solution to a problem: She "lost" so many documents, she spent significant resources on searching through all the folders in all the drawers in all the cabinets to find that letter she wrote yesterday. But now she had created a single cabinet, named "Cabinet", with a single drawer, named "Drawer", and a single folder, named "Folder", and moved all her documents into that folder. She no longer spent time on endless searches! All her co-workers rejoiced: That's a great idea! So within a few weeks they all had adopted the same solution, to overcome the problem of "lost" documents.

Today, it may be hard to understand that people couldn't use hierarchical systems properly, but that's how it was. While you could tell a developer to just do a "man find", the "find" syntax is completely incomprehensible to anynone without software background. Dogfooding proves that files can easily be found in a hierarchy. The developer don't see it as a problem. The customer does.
GeneralRe: Dogfooding is hard Pin
honey the codewitch13-Dec-19 6:32
mvahoney the codewitch13-Dec-19 6:32 
GeneralRe: Dogfooding is hard Pin
Greg Utas13-Dec-19 7:14
professionalGreg Utas13-Dec-19 7:14 
GeneralRe: Dogfooding is hard Pin
honey the codewitch13-Dec-19 7:14
mvahoney the codewitch13-Dec-19 7:14 
GeneralRe: Dogfooding is hard Pin
Gerry Schmitz15-Dec-19 15:31
mveGerry Schmitz15-Dec-19 15:31 
RantDo You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
honey the codewitch12-Dec-19 20:35
mvahoney the codewitch12-Dec-19 20:35 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
OriginalGriff12-Dec-19 20:39
mveOriginalGriff12-Dec-19 20:39 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
honey the codewitch12-Dec-19 20:41
mvahoney the codewitch12-Dec-19 20:41 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
Jörgen Andersson12-Dec-19 20:57
professionalJörgen Andersson12-Dec-19 20:57 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
honey the codewitch12-Dec-19 20:58
mvahoney the codewitch12-Dec-19 20:58 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
Jörgen Andersson12-Dec-19 21:04
professionalJörgen Andersson12-Dec-19 21:04 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
honey the codewitch12-Dec-19 21:08
mvahoney the codewitch12-Dec-19 21:08 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
Jörgen Andersson12-Dec-19 21:44
professionalJörgen Andersson12-Dec-19 21:44 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
dandy7214-Dec-19 10:33
dandy7214-Dec-19 10:33 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
Jörgen Andersson14-Dec-19 10:36
professionalJörgen Andersson14-Dec-19 10:36 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
dandy7214-Dec-19 10:44
dandy7214-Dec-19 10:44 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
Randor 12-Dec-19 22:48
professional Randor 12-Dec-19 22:48 
GeneralRe: Do You Want To Restore Your Pages? Chrome Didn't Shut Down Properly Pin
honey the codewitch12-Dec-19 23:01
mvahoney the codewitch12-Dec-19 23:01 

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