OT: someone close to me never tastes the food they cook, I can't understand that. You don't know how long to cook it, or how to season it, or if the balance of sour/sweet/salt/umami/whatever is right at the point you can fix it ...

But that's more an analogue of "use your program before you release it".

I guess they do eat it though, and then improve the recipe for next time by adjusting what they like. More like an AI approach in that case :D

At least they are 'dogfooding' it and not just letting others eat it I hope :)

When I'm cooking food that I'm going to eat myself I try to limit tasting. If I taste a lot I'm likely to end up with sensory satiation and won't enjoy the meal much by the time I sit down at the table. Just smelling the food while I'm cooking it can trigger this for some dishes (typically curries and other similarly pungent dishes).

If I'm cooking a dish that I've cooked at least three or so times before I generally have a good idea of how things should be going and I can get away with only tasting once or twice at the end.

I am in this place. I have been working for months on an app that perhaps a few dozen people might want (in the semantic web space). If I have a few enthusiastic users who provide some feedback, I am good with that.

Enterprise software is often the epitome of being removed from the results and the fruits of your work, it's a prime example of what Marx was talking about.

You can write unit tests and Spring components with 64 character names all day long but by the end of the day you are completely disassociated from your contribution. Rarely is anybody there to thank you, who is grateful you made their life better, or who has some simple joy over what you created. It definitely happens (e.g. a major release) but it's not a regular event. It often doesn't feel like you just made your community a little better by producing something sensible.

I know people who do hobbies like carpentering and they hand out their (amazing) work as gifts. You can see them oozing with fulfillment when they do and going into their hobbyspace is an escape from the world of work-for-a-living.

This is far from enterprise software: I am planning all three apps to be free on Apple's App Store. I have (or will have) a web site for each, with extra material, terms of service, privacy info, etc. I will have links to my consulting web page and my books page so I might indirectly earn some income.

I have the same attitude with apps as with the books I write: if some people enjoy them and I get to occasionally meet (probably virtually) app users and book readers, then I am very good with that.

re: "going into their hobbyspace is an escape from the world of work-for-a-living": for most people this is really important. For me, I go wilderness hiking every day and have a hobby of cooking so I have several hours a day away from technical interests.

That's a good point.

I have nothing to show for my 14 months at [redacted], but I still use the trivial little app I made years ago to redirect my search queries to different sites. It took all of 5 hours to write.