Recipes for Success

There are multiple recipes for success in technology, and like chefs, they vary from place to place and person to person.

What works for one person won't for another, without some adjustments.

In many ways the Local Sourcing movement changed the ways in which cuisine was made, gone in some places were the Special of the Day (to go on a tangent that was often a way for kitchen's to get rid of stock that was getting old) to be replaced with a full seasonal menu. Just like companies that use different technologies in different ways so the environment is different in what a Developer, Tester, or Manager needs to know in order to stay current or be ready to make the next step.

Recipes handed down in a family are based on a point in time where ingredients were local and available, some at only certain times of year so they were "in Fall we had" or "on this holiday my grandmother made...". When shipping became more immediate and being able to send produce and meats long distances with a relative amount of freshness so more ingredients became available in wider times. That removed the specialness of certain things that could only be found at certain times of the year, and how foodies looked only for certain ingredients at certain times because only THEN were they tasty.

Technology evolves but in companies with established practices there are certain things that remain in a specific way with people having to learn how to use that version of a software with another. Change comes slow, and with new versions of Java, Python, and dare I say Perl (though who even uses that anymore...) at times you need to adjust how software is built and when bringing build recipes current there are adjustments that need to be made. Some easy, some not. Some complex, some not. In the end its the result you want, and like a tasty dish, you want the build to be complete, whole, and workable.

Correlations are fun, and there is more to be done with cooking (a fave of mine) and software, but more on that later. I have a special dish I need to get ready for....