Article discussion: How Software Development is Like Fast Food Restaurants

[Brad Jones]

This thread is for discussing the article:

How Software Development is Like Fast Food Restaurants

If you have thoughts or opinions on this Developer.com article, share them here.

[ahoodin]

Well it sounds like the Author is suggesting cutting specs and doco. I am not certain I agree with all of the article. I agree that software development should be an adaptive process, and I feel that many applications lack doco, and consistant methods to accomplish the users tasks.

ahoodin

[GuOddian]

I got bored half way through it and had to push myself to finish the article. I thought it was a load of dribble I'm afraid. You can make a comparison between software development and pretty much any other career in one way or another and I felt that the comparisons in this article were a stretch.

Software departments create formulas to approach development and use these to solve incoming problems. So do Lawyers, Accountants, Businessmen, Builders and Fast food chains. It's simple an effective method.

Ease? Again it makes good business sense to take the path well known and most easily travelled if it solves the problem. While this imposes on innovation, often time is the most important factor. Again I'm not sure why this is compared to the Fast Food industry. Food chains like McDonalds have processes that have been developed to consistancy overy many years. They're simple enough for a 14 year old to understand with minimal training and product a product that's in demand. Any industry that wants to be successful should take these lessons in stride.

Getting healthy software? Fast food's bad for you so learn to eat better. Somehow that relates to software development. Somehow the author jumps from this to smaller requirements documentation and pretty much no documentation for o ther processes. I fail to see the link or the relevance or the point.

Fast food chains have defined processes that are reproducable and reusable that build a product from a defined and complete set of requirements in exactly the same fashion every time in a very small time frame with minimal error and without overengineering the product to provide something more than the customer has asked for. If you look at the development industry from a production sense (not an innovation sense which has apparently been entirely overlooked by this article) then that is something that production development departments strive to achieve.

Well, that's my 2c.

[bob42]

I liked the article. Actually, as a European I get the impression that not only
fast food but just about everything in the US follows a consistent
"look-and-feel": Road intersections, highway numbering, doors (*every*
shop's door opens to the outside in the States).

This is very reassuring when you go places. Though people may be different
wherever you go, there is certain things that give you a practical and
psychological support.

In other parts of the world people would argue that this consistency
suppresses local culture, but that's BS from my point of view.

The only point I did not like about the article: The fact that you do not
have to eat unhealthy stuff at a fastfood place - that even the fastfood
place offers alternatives is only mentioned in the very end. And what does
it imply? It suggests that ultimately you alone are responsible for your
body pounds (or your ugly codebase). And many open source projects have
shown that w/o any methodology but "constant refactoring" (the equivalent
of hard-core diets) you can produce high quality resulsts as well :-)

[ovidiucucu]

"How Cow is Like Chicken".

Maybe's nice, but I can imagine what's beyond the title, without reading: software is an industry invaded by companies with dumb programmers, making cheap but dangerous stuff,... and so on and so on....Beware what you buy (and eat)!

Have I guessed?

[ahoodin]

Originally Posted by ovidiucucu

"How Cow is Like Chicken".

Maybe's nice, but I can imagine what's beyond the title, without reading: software is an industry invaded by companies with dumb programmers, making cheap but dangerous stuff,... and so on and so on....Beware what you buy (and eat)!

Have I guessed?

Hence less is really more.

ahoodin