Stupid phrase, but a good one. According to Wikipedia, the term came from inside Microsoft. Despite the origin of the word, I still think it is quite descriptive.

    For the last few weeks, as my home grown code has been rolled into Raydo, I am using complete Raydo applications daily, instead of the piecemeal applications I was using before. You know what I mean, first you write an application, then you find another use and you extend it, and on and on and on.

According to our Wiki overlords, eating one’s own dog food has four benefits.

Using one’s own products has four primary benefits:

1. The product’s developers are familiar with using the products they develop.
2. The company’s members have direct knowledge and experience with its products.
3. Users see that the company has confidence in its own products.
4. Technically savvy users in the company, with perhaps a very wide set of business requirements and deployments, are able to discover and report bugs in the products before they are released to the general public.

    I say, sure. Whatever. But I think I have found a fifth benefit. You realize what is annoying to the end user using your product everyday and you want to change whatever feature. People say that writing open source software is like scratching an itch. Well, fixing an annoying GUI is drinking a Old Milwaukee. You deal with it, but you would really rather have a Heineken.

    So you use the application , and the same thing keeps buggin you so you end up tweaking the GUI. Does it a something to the bottom line, not but doing a GUI right is soooooooooo much better than just slapping any old GUI on an application. I guess my time spent at a company that really cares about user interfaces has permanently warped me. User interfaces should be all about the user. Not how the person designing it THINKS the user would use it. I think I am unique, because I wear both hats, I write software for trading , I trade everyday, and I love designing GUI’s. Well, that is more like 2.5 hats, but you get my meaning.

    If you are an engineer designing a GUI, please take a look at this book. Designing bad user interfaces is no way to go through life.