Last month, I posted my “Runway crazy” piece, and Jennifer (hi, Jennifer! Thanks for reading!) commented that she’d like to hear more about the parallels between software development and fashion design (that sounds weird, even to me!). Now, I’d thought that I’d already written about this, but apparently not.
Here goes…
One of the first things that struck me about Project Runway when I watched the first season (available on DVD!), was “Hey! we do the same thing in software! In software development, we start with an overall concept (often from a “customer”), then plan out the steps, execute the steps, make final changes due to usage, and voila: software. In design, they do the same thing: take a concept, construct a pattern, assemble the outfit, fit the outfit.
The designers even face similar constraints:
As an aside (but not really), the Software Development conference used to have a feature called the “C++ Superbowl”. Developers from each of the C++ compiler/IDE vendors would go head-to-head to develop a series of application challenges. This was done in real time, on stage, in front of an audience. I thought that it was incredibly exciting. With the death of C++ as a major development language, the Superbowl was discontinued, but I wish that they’d bring it back. It was great to see how the various products could be used for the challenges, and it was also great to see how capable the vendor teams were. For the record, Borland won almost all of the challenges, until they stopped participating (due to their own internal problems). Also for the record, the think that killed the Superbowl was Sun’s lawsuit that broke off the main Java vendor, Microsoft. This basically made the Superbowl irrelevant.
Back to Runway: I’d recommend anyone that develops IP of some kind (software, hardware design, fiction, etc.) watch the show. There’s much to relate to.
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