Eat your own dog food

One thing has puzzled me for some time. Why does Joel on Software have more than ten thousand subscribers in Bloglines?

Today I found the answer. From time to time he writes interesting article on programming. Here is an excerpt from something he wrote more than four years ago:

'Eating your own dog food is the quaint name that we in the computer industry give to the process of actually using your own product. I had forgotten how well it worked, until a month ago, I took home a build of CityDesk (thinking it was about 3 weeks from shipping) and tried to build a site with it.

Phew! There were a few bugs that literally made it impossible for me to proceed, so I had to fix those before I could even continue. All the testing we did, meticulously pulling down every menu and seeing if it worked right, didn't uncover the showstoppers that made it impossible to do what the product was intended to allow. Trying to use the product, as a customer would, found these showstoppers in a minute.'

To use your application as a customer is a good advice. I developed sharealink more than a year ago and use it every day. By using it I found some irritating features that have been ironed out, and a list of improvements I haven't had time for yet.