(The term "dogfooding" arises from an old marketing saying which says
that dogfood manufacturers should "eat their own dogfood". See
"Dynamics of Software Development", Jim McCarthy, section 40.
His use of the term refers to the specific effect of seeing the
members of a software development team actually try to USE the
product which they are building.)
Funny things happen when a software developer actually tries to USE
the software they're creating. You see things through a different
pair of eyes. The expanded perspective is definitely worth the time.
Of course, true dogfooding happens when the software becomes so good
that people *want* to use it. As it happens, I'm more or less *forcing*
myself to use it. Even so, I've been pleasantly surprised.
I recently wrote a 6-page document using AbiWord. I did all of my
text editing on Linux. I then moved the document to our Windows
version and printed it. The transition across the platforms worked
without a glitch. Editing, in general, was not problematic. The
product crashed a few times, so I fixed the relevant bugs.
When dogfooding, the things that irk you are not what you expect.
For example, it's amazing how much more usable the product is now,
after Jeff fixed the scroll range problems yesterday. Prior to that
fix, it was nearly impossible to work effectively on a multi-page
docuemnt. Furthermore, the lack of widow/orphan control is really
a problem, even though I had previously regarded that feature with
less importance. Also, since my document is in fact 6 pages long,
I really miss footers with page numbers.
The highest goal of software development, in my opinion, is in the
creation of something which people actually USE. Dogfooding is an
important sign of progress. As AbiWord matures, I look forward to seeing
it in use by lots of people.
For now, I'm proud to be AbiWord's only actual user (AFAIK). The
program worked reasonably well. The document I was working on
looks good on paper. I handed it to another individual for review.
Writing that document was actually part of my job. I can honestly
say that I used AbiWord to get real work done. I find that very
satisfying.
-- Eric W. Sink, Software Craftsman eric@abisource.com