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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: M

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, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system... The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it: you know where to find everything with your eyes closed, everything you need during the course of the shift is at the ready at arm’s reach, your defenses are deployed. If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for backup. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook’s station in the middle of a rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He’d press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, bread crumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side towel. “You see this?” he’d inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef’s palm. “That’s what the inside of your head looks like now.” One thing that makes software different than other jobs is that most of the space in which we work is what we ourselves have built in previous days. A messy codebase makes it hard to have a calm, clear presence. Which in turn leads to a messier codebase. There are whole projects, probably whole companies, where the inside of everybody's head looks like that. So for me, a key part of developing is creating and projecting the sorts of work that over the long term enable that feeling of "the universe is in order". Indeed, you could write a history of software development in terms of how much progress we're making in that.

zumu 5y ago
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!
- wpietri 5y ago
  This is definitely not representative of the book. But I loved it, as do many others, so I doubt you'll find your time wasted.
wunderlust 5y ago
I’ve worked in kitchens, and this characterization favors my experience much more closely than does the author’s. In a kitchen, mistakes are costly; imagine that you have one chance to compile your code, and if it doesn’t compile, then you lose that code. In fact, I’d go almost as far to say that cooking (in a professional kitchen, where mise en place really matters) and software development are about as different as any two disciplines you can imagine - cats and dogs. The element of time, the cost & consequences of mistakes, the discipline of routine, and the nature of problem solving couldn’t be more dissimilar in these two practices. In fact, they seem different in almost every way, and I’m struggling to find a reasonable common methodology or strategic principle.

zumu 5y ago

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!

wpietri 5y ago
This is definitely not representative of the book. But I loved it, as do many others, so I doubt you'll find your time wasted.

wunderlust 5y ago

I’ve worked in kitchens, and this characterization favors my experience much more closely than does the author’s. In a kitchen, mistakes are costly; imagine that you have one chance to compile your code, and if it doesn’t compile, then you lose that code. In fact, I’d go almost as far to say that cooking (in a professional kitchen, where mise en place really matters) and software development are about as different as any two disciplines you can imagine - cats and dogs. The element of time, the cost & consequences of mistakes, the discipline of routine, and the nature of problem solving couldn’t be more dissimilar in these two practices. In fact, they seem different in almost every way, and I’m struggling to find a reasonable common methodology or strategic principle.