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Software Mise En Place

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Re: Software Mise En Place

#71

Post by alasdair_ »

senjin wrote: post #61

There's a book by Dan Charnas called "Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind" that does a great job of explaining the system of mise en place beyond just setup and precutting vegetables. My favorite takeaway that has actually helped my organization in practice has been to leave a project/code base in a clean state after working on it. Sounds obvious but writing chec…

I deliberately leave a project in a broken state when I am done for the day (e.g. a broken test) if I am coming back to it tomorrow.

The reason is that it’s very easy to get started again - the test is broken, so the next task is to fix the test.

Re: Software Mise En Place

#72

Post by alasdair_ »

pm215 wrote: post #22
elcapitan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will also screw it up if you don't do it like this, because if you cook the soft things first, they will mush while the other parts are still hard. Cooking is always experience and tasting while doing it. And it can vary a lot based on ingredients of the day. It's not really that hard to get it right though, just by touching it it's easy to see that a zucchini will cook faster than fennel.

Generally the recipe will tell you to cook the fennel first, though, and will give timings so you can get it right. The problem with prep-on-demand is that if you start cooking the fennel and then are unable to prep the zucchini fast enough to add it at the right time then you're stuffed. If you prep everything in advance then the worst that happens is you stand around with nothing to do for 5 minutes until the time…

> you stand around with nothing to do for 5 minutes

This is why wine was invented.

Re: Software Mise En Place

#73

Post by matchagaucho »

chrisdbanks wrote: post #15

For me, "Mise en place", has nothing to do with chopping everything beforehand and in fact that is completely different from how I cook and develop software. Chopping everything at the start seems like it takes longer. I think Mise en place can mean different things to different people. The way I was taught it was to have everything "in place" before you start. Literally you gather all the ingredients in one place (o…

And for these reasons Mise-en-scène may be a better metaphor for Software Development.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise-en-sc%C3%A8ne

Re: Software Mise En Place

#74

Post by pkulak »

chrisdbanks wrote: post #15

For me, "Mise en place", has nothing to do with chopping everything beforehand and in fact that is completely different from how I cook and develop software. Chopping everything at the start seems like it takes longer. I think Mise en place can mean different things to different people. The way I was taught it was to have everything "in place" before you start. Literally you gather all the ingredients in one place (o…

I really like going full mise en place when I cook. I go through the ingredients, and anything that can't be very easily measured on demand (not 1 tsp, for example, but I would do 1.5 cups), I measure out and chop into its own temporary container. Then when I move to the preparation, I've removed all the stress from the process.

I used to freak out about not making extra dishes, but who cares. I have a dishwasher. It take 20 seconds to throw 3-5 small bowls on the top rack.

Re: Software Mise En Place

#75

Post by WJW »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #68
WJW wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is experimentation in cooking, but not usually in restaurants while serving actual customers. That is the time for just making the recipes you practiced. There is very little reason to write out (say) the same algorithm a hundred times because you have a hundred different users who need it, but a cook can't just ctrl-C ctrl-V a dish.

I think that's the case for for lower-end restaurants, but for high-end restaurants, they are going to be tweaking things as they go. Ingredients are never perfectly interchangeable because they have to be grown or raised in real-world conditions that vary from one farm to the next or one season to the next.

Is this something that you know from actual restaurant cooking experience? Because high end restaurants lean extremely heavily on the concept of practice sessions where the cooks practice individual dishes over and over and perfect the mise en place for a specific menu ahead of time. Especially high end restaurants go out of their way to make sure that any experimentation will have been done ahead of time and not discovered at showtime.

Re: Software Mise En Place

#76

Post by paulcole »

senjin wrote: post #61

There's a book by Dan Charnas called "Work Clean: The life-changing power of mise-en-place to organize your life, work, and mind" that does a great job of explaining the system of mise en place beyond just setup and precutting vegetables. My favorite takeaway that has actually helped my organization in practice has been to leave a project/code base in a clean state after working on it. Sounds obvious but writing chec…

Yes, this is an excellent book. About 1/3 of the people where I work read it. The difference between those who did and those who didn’t is stark.

A good “add-on” read to this is Essentialism. I felt like it complemented Working Clean very well.

https://www.amazon.com/Essentialism-Disciplined-Pursuit-Greg...

Re: Software Mise En Place

#77

Post by zumu »

wpietri wrote: post #59
chrisdbanks wrote: post #15

For me, "Mise en place", has nothing to do with chopping everything beforehand and in fact that is completely different from how I cook and develop software. Chopping everything at the start seems like it takes longer. I think Mise en place can mean different things to different people. The way I was taught it was to have everything "in place" before you start. Literally you gather all the ingredients in one place (o…

Yeah, I understand the term via Anthony Bourdain and his book Kitchen Confidential. I think his description of it also leads to some good software analogies: Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a line cook’s ‘meez’ — meaning his setup, his carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, backups, and so on. As a cook, your station, a…

Not a former cook, but a former barista, and this resonates with me deeply. The same underlying emotion that drove me to continually wipe down my station is the same that drives me to be fastidious about minutiae in my code bases.

I'll have to check this book out!

Re: Software Mise En Place

#78

Post by elcapitan »

pm215 wrote: post #22
elcapitan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will also screw it up if you don't do it like this, because if you cook the soft things first, they will mush while the other parts are still hard. Cooking is always experience and tasting while doing it. And it can vary a lot based on ingredients of the day. It's not really that hard to get it right though, just by touching it it's easy to see that a zucchini will cook faster than fennel.

Generally the recipe will tell you to cook the fennel first, though, and will give timings so you can get it right. The problem with prep-on-demand is that if you start cooking the fennel and then are unable to prep the zucchini fast enough to add it at the right time then you're stuffed. If you prep everything in advance then the worst that happens is you stand around with nothing to do for 5 minutes until the time…

> if you start cooking the fennel and then are unable to prep the zucchini fast enough to add it at the right time then you're stuffed

Not really, cooking is not baking (where you need to control the process tightly), you always have much more leeway (except for marginal conditions like things burning). Especially with harder vegetables, which have a long range from hard over al dente to soft but still nice. Unless you have to fulfill some Michelin style quality control, you won't have that problem.

Re: Software Mise En Place

#79

Post by albedoa »

stavros wrote: post #51
simulate-me wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Cooking onions is not down time” directly follows from “there’s no downtime in cooking.” If there is no downtime in cooking is true, then *cooking* onions cannot be downtime.

Indeed, and if the GP has said "there's no downtime in cooking", it would have been apt. "Cooking onions is not downtime" isn't an effective rebuttal of the general point of "I chop things during downtime, for example when cooking onions".

If cooking onions is not downtime, then it absolutely is an effective rebuttal to the general point of "I chop things [only] during downtime, for example when cooking onions".

"I only tell the truth, for example when lying" is irrecoverably self-invalidating. There is no second example that could nullify its effects. The argument is made invalid by that example specifically. (Not to mention, it calls into question the claimant's understanding of what it means to tell the truth.)

You have misidentified the fallacy here.

Re: Software Mise En Place

#80

Post by tmnvix »

I sometimes remind myself of the principle 'mise en place' when I need that little bit of motivation to get started on something (trusting that once I've invested a few minutes I'll carry on).

It involves 'getting out all the tools' - the local development server, opening up my notes, a terminal window running the virtual environment, etc.

An equally important part though is clearing away the things I won't be using.

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