Eat your own Dogfood

Quite a few moons ago, I interviewed a gentleman working for a CASE tool vendor. They had just shutdown one of their development shops, and employees had two choices. Find another job, or be relocated. This chap decided to go searching, and our paths crossed. It didn’t take long for me to get way off track with my questions, and eventually I point-blank asked him if they used their own CASE tool on internal development projects. He said “no”, and then nervously suggested that we get the interview back on track. I can’t recall if we ended up hiring the guy, but that interview left an indelible impression and taught an important lesson. If the guy who developed the software doesn’t use it, then you shouldn’t use it. How many open source projects do you think are created where the authors have never used the tool or framework? I’m guessing very few. How many product companies develop products that they don’t use internally? I’m guessing quite a few.

It’s a pretty simple question to ask the next tool vendor trying to sell you their product. If they say yes, then ask them what they like and dislike about the tool. Their honesty is apparent.

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