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What Can You Put in a Refrigerator? (2015) (dadgum.com)
22 points by spiffytech on Jan 18, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments


"Anything that (1) fits into a refrigerator and (2) is edible."

I keep batteries in my refrigerator.


I do this as well.

I realized I needed one for my car-keys. Bought more and put them into the "battery storage" area. Turns out I'd stored the exact same battery there previously (so I used that one instead).



Hacker news really has gone down hill of late..


It goes uphill and downhill.


An even worse question:

"Can you get this jumble of things to fit into the refrigerator (spec)? All you need to do is make it fit, we can fix any problems later. It shouldn't take you more than an hour."


I don't know why, but I envisioned something out of a thriller where they are storing a body in a fridge.


[flagged]


I think it's a good thought exercise to give perspective on the challenge of getting clients to hand over good specs for software. Putting something into a fridge is simple and familiar, and here we see it's still a struggle to define a quality spec.

A client may say, "all I want is a button, why does that take two weeks an $20k to add?", and the developer who knows all the ways that button breaks the system's assumptions about data and behavior may have trouble expressing that to the client. The frustrated developer may wonder why it's like pulling teeth to get the client stop changing requirements, but in the client's head everything seems simple (like the fridge) until they encounter a bizarre behavior they didn't consider but the application code had to.

This article provides a good starting point for a discussion between client and developer about why their process needs to be iterative, and why its important to make requirements decisions early while they're still cheap to update.




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