

The Ultimate Dogfooding Story - bdotdub
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001217.html

======
mechanical_fish
This guy is my personal hero, but -- alas -- this is also a story about _worse
is better_ :

[http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/how-
to/articles/saws...](http://www.taunton.com/finehomebuilding/how-
to/articles/sawstop-revisited.aspx)

 _"Having heard all of the various reasons put forth by the manufacturers for
not doing anything, I firmly believe it simply comes down to money," says
Gass. "They cannot figure out how to make more money by adding SawStop. They
are not paying for the injuries that occur now, so why should they spend money
to change their product to eliminate a cost they aren't bearing?"_

So, although this guy has offered his safety technology to all tool
manufacturers, SawStop is only available on SawStop-branded saws, which cost a
bit more money, which causes people to bitch and moan, because who wants to
spend money on a feature that merely prevents injuries?

The appropriate software-platform analogy is left as an exercise for the
reader. ;)

~~~
wallflower
According to SawStop PR, SawStop has prevented about 150 injuries.

It appears that Stephen Gass is attempting to extort revenues.

> Here in the States the argument over licensing the SawStop technology has
> been hot, heavy, and plenty of it. Mr. Gass wants 8% for a license, which
> will add about $80USD to the cost of the typical table saw, plus the cost of
> the mechanism and the labour to install it. Delta, et al. balked at the
> price.

[http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=60686&pag...](http://www.woodworkforums.com/showthread.php?t=60686&page=3)

Woodworkers are pretty smart and safety conscious. I've taken a couple wood
working classes at my local community college. As our teacher, a master
woodworker, told us - "woodworking is about problem solving. it doesn't matter
how you do it - there is no right or wrong - only smarter, faster, and safer.
it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as it looks nice"

~~~
mechanical_fish
_It appears that Stephen Gass is attempting to extort revenues._

Don't you think you should... _rephrase_ that? I believe the term is
"negotiate a price", not "extort revenues".

I'm no fan of software patents or obvious patents, but if ever an invention
deserved a patent, this is it.

I'm not suggesting that this is a story of greedy companies, or of greedy
inventors. I believe the companies when they say that most people aren't
willing to pay an additional 8% (for a tool that will probably last a
lifetime) to hedge against amputation injuries. I just don't understand that,
is all. Check out this abstract from some epidemiologists:

[http://www.joem.org/pt/re/joem/abstract.00043764-199610000-0...](http://www.joem.org/pt/re/joem/abstract.00043764-199610000-00014.htm;jsessionid=JQFLj8wtHx028CNSrxnkybFn3GFnvybCCLTBvtHWqTGxf1CycfNn!136317464!181195628!8091!-1)

They sampled 283 amateur and pro woodworkers in New Mexico and report that "5%
of all respondents suffered partial amputations." _That is a really big
fraction._ Obviously, I'm unlikely to saw as much wood in my life as a
professional carpenter, but it still seems like my odds of losing a finger as
an amateur woodworker are probably far higher than one in 100,000. They might
even be on the order of 1%. Which, to me, makes SawStop a no-brainer at $80. I
want the miter saw and band saw versions, too.

~~~
wallflower
Perhaps 8% is a reasonable number to not lose your digits. Unfortunately, the
customer isn't going to be able to decide (unless they buy SawStop's own)
until Delta et al. license. and/or significant public pressure is brought
(e.g. someone famous losing their fingers woodworking)

Another reason why companies like Delta et al. are resistant to the innovation
is the imminent threat of tens of millions of damages in retroactive lawsuits
(e.g. by licensing this technology now - it is tantamount to admission that
they were negligent in not providing it earlier [at least in the years since
SawStop was announced to the industry].

720k * 40% * (2009 - 2003) is a lot of potential class-action litigants. 2003
is the year when Stephen Gass stepped up his negotiations by approaching the
U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission about a federal mandate.

"Woodworking equipment produces approximately 720,000 injuries per year often
causing severe psychologic and functional impairment. Responses from 1000
injured woodworkers to a demographic survey revealed that 60.5% of injuries
occurred to amateur woodworkers; 42% of injuries were caused by the table saw
and 37% of respondents reported amputation of one or more digits. The most
significant causal factor reported was failure to use properly installed
guards, but personal factors, such as fatigue and postprandial somnolence were
also implicated. Twenty-seven percent of respondents required hospitalization
for an average of 3.7 days, and 22.8% were treated by hand surgeons."

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3498745>

~~~
nebula
I don't know anything about retroactive lawsuits. But if people can sue these
companies after they license the technology, why can't they sue them for not
licensing and providing safety? It would sounds so ironic.

Am I missing something here or the laws are really in such a way ...

------
wallflower
Lest you think he started with the finger - it was hot dogs first...

"Ultimately, it seemed like the most reliable technique would have to involve
contact detection, Gass recalls. And because your body has an electrical
capacitance, it offers the potential for that. I figured that if you put a
voltage into the saw blade, your body could absorb some of that signal. Then
the voltage in the saw blade would drop.

Within a week, Gass formulated most of the idea’s details in his mind. Thirty
days later, he completed his first working prototype. Initially, he tested the
prototype by touching the side of the saw blade with a finger. And while that
proved the saw could stop in a fraction of a second, he still didn’t know if
it was quick enough to prevent serious injury. Gass wondered how deep a
4,000-rpm saw blade would cut into human flesh during the microseconds that it
took to stop the blade. To answer that, he needed to touch the blade teeth.

"I came up with the idea of using hot dogs, and it worked pretty well," Gass
says. "It’s cheap, readily available, and you don’t get any protesters coming
to your door."

From a Design News article - he was chosen as DN's Engineer of The Year 2007
(aside: DN is one of the _best_ pure applied engineering publications that I
actually read - apply for a subscription)

[http://www.designnews.com/article/print/5897-Man_on_a_Missio...](http://www.designnews.com/article/print/5897-Man_on_a_Mission.php)

------
gruseom
That's not what "eating your own dog food" means. It means using your product
to do your own work. As in: if Gass were a woodworker and used the saw on his
own projects, he'd get better ideas about saw design.

I like the saw story too, but its applicability to software projects is...?
Here's the moral of the story offered by Atwood:

 _Nothing exudes confidence like software developers who are willing to stick
their own extremities into the spinning blades of software they've written._

That's inane even by his standards.

------
ComputerGuru
The original video of Steve Gass sticking his own finger into the table-saw:
[http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/325071/6bb3c29d/time_warp_ci...](http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/325071/6bb3c29d/time_warp_cirkelzaag.html)

(the one on CH is of a hotdog... this one is of a real, live human digit!!!)

------
khafra
It is a good story. I don't know if you can call the risk of a finger
"ultimate," though; when Nikola Tesla bet his life on the skin effect of very
high frequency alternating current as a PR counter Edison's animal
electrocution demonstrations.

~~~
aneesh
You can always nitpick, but compared to what 99.9% of engineers put at stake
when selling a product, putting your finger in the blade is quite the vote of
confidence.

~~~
kragen
If by "engineers" you mean "programmers" then yes; but I think that among
actual engineers, you'll find a lot of people who ride in cars they designed,
walk across bridges they designed, cut with tools they designed, drive on
roads they designed, and so on.

------
biohacker42
I've heard of the Sawstop technology before and what I heard was very
depressing if true.

Basically none of the table saw manufacturers want to deal with this guy
because they are afraid or lawsuits.

The logic goes like this, right now everybody knows a table saw will maim you,
there's no expectation that it won't.

But if they implement that technology, and it then fails, _then_ there will be
a BIG lawsuit.

Meanwhile everybody who uses a table saw and sees Sawstop, wants it.

But the guy is having a very difficult time setting a major manufacturing
operation to ship Sawstop table saws himself.

Again, I don't know if this is true, but it's very sad if it is.

\-- EDIT:

I missed this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=453822>

------
Tichy
A lot of medical researchers apparently also experimented on themselves.

~~~
ramchip
I work at a place where we develop microscopes (fairly powerful, laser-based
microscopes). It's complicated to get the autorizations to bring biological
tissues (that's our official, grant-application name for supermarket meat)
into the uni lab, so most researchers just trust the calculations and image
their own fingers.

My research director always uses the same finger, although it's a bit of a
superstition...

------
sounddust
I would argue that this was a horrible decision, even if everything turned out
in the end. It reminds me of when a kid makes a really stupid decision that by
chance turns out well, and the parents (correctly) yell at him despite the
result.

If it had turned out that there was a minor flaw/"bug" in his implementation,
he'd lose his finger for no reason.

What would be much better is to make lots of test saws with his technology and
give them to carpenters for free. The worst thing that could happen is that
someone who would have lost their finger anyway would lose their finger. The
best would be free publicity.

------
barbie17
Is what Jeff Atwood doing even legal?!?! You can't just "quote" 80% of
someone's work and then publish it as your own! In the article I counted only
6 sentences that Jess Atwood wrote himself. Can I just, say, "quote" a best
seller, add a few words of commentary and then publish it? I think not.

------
sown
I seem to remember the founder of American Body Armor performing
demonstrations on himself by firing a .38 revolver at himself while wearing
armor ... or something. heavily paraphrased.

------
zain
Here is the video of the creator testing it with his own finger:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3mzhvMgrLE>

------
chris11
This may be the first application for table saws, but this has been around for
awhile. It's basically the kind of saw that doctors use to remove casts.

------
huhtenberg
A guy I once worked with aptly referred to the "dog-fooding" as "feel the
pain" approach.

------
dan_sim
I don't like the principle behind the dog food. It means that you create a
product good for dogs but not humans. Something not made for you. Then, when
you start eating it, you improve it to a level being acceptable to you, a
human.

I like to think that I create human food, a product that I need and care about
if it's good or not at the start.

~~~
eru
> It means that you create a product good for dogs but not humans.

That's not the original meaning of dogfooding. Compare: "Lorne Greene would
tout the benefits of the dog food, and then would say it's so good that he
feeds it to his own dogs."

