{"id":72,"date":"2008-11-27T06:51:42","date_gmt":"2008-11-27T06:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wholetomato.com\/?p=72"},"modified":"2014-05-21T19:17:57","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T19:17:57","slug":"recursive-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wholetomato.com\/blog\/recursive-products\/","title":{"rendered":"Recursive Products"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my first tasks at Whole Tomato was to do some code cleanup in the name of learning the Visual Assist codebase.\u00a0 After just a few Find References<\/a>, Renames<\/a>, and Goto Definitions<\/a>, I realized the recursive nature of this product:\u00a0 I was using VA to learn VA.\u00a0 I was using VA to refactor VA’s refactoring code.\u00a0 I was even using the codebase as a test suite for itself.<\/p>\n

Most products aren’t like this.\u00a0 Clearly other development tools, IDEs and compilers fall into this category.\u00a0 And perhaps source control and bug tracking tools qualify, although more indirectly.\u00a0 But outside of software, I have trouble thinking of similar examples.\u00a0 Manufacturing?\u00a0 Chemical reactions?\u00a0 Books about making books?<\/p>\n

What other companies use their own product in the direct production of that very product?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my first tasks at Whole Tomato was to do some code cleanup in the name of learning the Visual Assist codebase.\u00a0 After just a few Find References, Renames, and Goto Definitions, I realized…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":980745,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfpLS4-1a","aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t