If you work in the software industry, you may already know the term dogfooding, which means “to use one’s own product.” Grant explains how dogfood became a verb. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Dogfooding”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha and Grant. This is Cynthia from Louisville, Kentucky.
Hi, Cynthia. What’s going on?
Well, I was reading a blog called Valley Wag the other day. It’s a Silicon Valley gossip blog. And they had this article talking about how things have really changed at Google. People used to get $30,000 bonuses and things like that. And this year it wasn’t so great. They had a great name to the article, which was Google Freuda. This year, instead of giving them $30,000, they gave them one of the new Google phones that has the Google operating system on it.
The term that they used for this was dogfooding as a verb, meaning to test something in-house. So instead of giving them bonuses, they basically gave them a phone to try out on their own time. And, of course, Grant, I immediately thought of you. Because I know you love words like this. And I wondered where it came from.
Dog fooding is when you use the product that you make or you eat the food that you make. And the idea here is that if it’s not good enough for you to eat, then why are you bothering? For example, if you’re giving your dog rubbish, stuff that you wouldn’t put on your own plate, then you’ve got to think twice about if that’s fair and if that’s right. You know, dog fooding is eating your own dog food. And this dates back to the 90s, maybe even the late 80s.
Microsoft certainly is known for this when they were making the Windows NT product. And I know all this from my days as a tech guy. When they were making the Windows NT product, I believe that they made all of the developers used the product that they were making. So, you know, there’s nothing that’s going to make you improve a product faster than finding bugs in it through your daily use, right?
Right. Bugs in your dog food. I love that dog food has become a verb. Would you write a newspaper article that you wouldn’t read? Would you do a radio show that you wouldn’t listen to? Martha, do you dog food our show?
I dog food our show all the time. Of course I do. I dog food our show again and again and again. Doesn’t everyone? Valleywag says that it’s a tech industry term. Is that true?
That is true. I think the concept is known in engineering, but I think the term, the concept of using the thing that you make, but I think the term dogfooding, it comes from the computer tech industry, yes. Seattle area, probably.
Okay. Cool. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for a great question. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thank you.
Well, if you’d like to talk about kibble or dog food or other tech industry terms, we’d love to hear about it. The number is 1-877-929-9673. Or you can send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
