2007.05.02
Of Wine and Software
Today, following the yearly IEEE Software board meeting, we visited the Casa Valduga winery near Bento Gonçalves at Rio Grande do Sul. The guide told us that the winery nowadays made all its wine in stainless steel vats, which have largely replaced the traditional oak barrels.
I remarked that this allowed the wine-makers to control the
consistency of the fermentation process,
avoiding problems associated with contamination and the aging of the
barrels.
At that point
Steve Mellor
observed that there was an analogy with software production.
One can claim that writing software is an art with an uncertain outcome,
or one can study and correct the problems in the process.
