Personally, for me, cooking is a passion, a pursuit that reaches beyond the basic need to eat. I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and I mean a lot of time. Countless hours are dedicated to reading cookbooks, researching recipies, and planning for the weeks efforts. This consumes a few hours over weeknights and a good portion of the every weekend.
At first glance, software engineering and cooking might seem worlds apart—one involves writing code, the other creating delicious meals. But if you look closer, the two fields share a surprising number of similarities. Whether youre a software engineer debugging a tricky issue or a chef perfecting a new recipe, the core principles are strikingly alike. Let's dive into the parallels!
As a software engineer by day, I can't help to apply the skills I use on a daily basis towards my hobbies, and the culinary arts is no exception. The two discplines may seem unrelated, but it really comes down to problem solving.
Recipes are somewhat guidelines. I own over 170 cookbooks, usually several for a given type of cuisine. I have around 8 on vietnamese and south east asian cuisine. When researching a new dish, I tend to start with my own personal library, and then consult a series of online resources in order to compare the different techniques and ingredients. What I am really looking for here are patterns. These tend to indicate steps for success.
Recipes in a way may be considered 'design patterns', which essnetially are blueprints for succesfull outcomes.
When developing software, pattern recognition also comes into play. Best practices come from experience across different projects, certain things just work, and you repeat them. Cooking techniques could be considered 'patterns' as well.
Both fields require constant testing and improvement. A chef frequently tastes their dish and adjusts seasoning, just like a developer debugs and optimizes their code. I am personally a huge fan of unit level testing. When writing applications, I produce small units of code, backed by unit level tests. When cooking, I frequently find myself testing the ingredients at each step of the way as a way to ensure a successfull end result.
Planning, estimating, measuring, adapting to unseen circumstances, all high level aspects of software engineering. Measuring is especially critical in baking. Many recipes call for 1 cup of this, or a tsp of that. I have found that in many cases working with weights is much more precise.
Preparing a meal is a process that involves planning. Do you have all the necessary ingredients? Can you prepare things in advance? How much time will your efforts take, are you on schedule to meet the dinner time milestone? My efforts typically involve prepping as much in advance as possible. Cutting vegitables is performed in what could be considered a sprint, and preparing meats in another, separation of efforts is required to avoid cross contamination.
Sometimes a bit of an angile approach is needed when you discover you might be running low on an ingredient, or adjust for temperature conditions when proofing bread and need to adapt accordingly.
Despite the abundance of cooking related material available, I still find myself making personal notes, which I keep in a binder. These include a lot of background information on techniques. There are a lot of opinions floating around regarding documentation of source code. Personally I believe that a lot of time can be saved when interpreting code when the proper level of documentation is avaiable, rather than brute force interpretation of source code.
My personal notes include temperatures, variations, what does and does not work. These annotations could be considered 'comments' whereas the recipe stes could be considered 'source code'.
As with many other aspects of my other endeavors, I find that the skills I use on a day to day basis at work transfer over well. The problem solving, planning, and analysis aspects I believe make me a more effective cook.