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I read it here.

The New Jersey guy said that the Unix solution was right because the design philosophy of Unix was simplicity and that the right thing was too complex. Besides, programmers could easily insert this extra test and loop. The MIT guy pointed out that the implementation was simple but the interface to the functionality was complex. The New Jersey guy said that the right tradeoff has been selected in Unix-namely, implementation simplicity was more important than interface simplicity.

The MIT guy then muttered that sometimes it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken, but the New Jersey guy didn't understand (I'm not sure I do either).

I don't understand it either. Is there an American cultural reference in there? Can anybody here explain?

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up vote 12 down vote accepted

It comes from an early slogan from Perdue, a major chicken producer in the US.

Here is a video from youtube. I don't think it is the original ad.

The message is that his tough standards for chicken production make some of the best (most tender) chicken. In the programming context it means that complex code may be required to implement a simple user interface.

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In this context, the person is saying something to the effect that the way you act while doing something isn't always the way you want the product to be: sometimes it takes a lot of work on the implementation side ("a tough man") to make an operating system simple to use ("a tender chicken").

(It's a rather silly comparison, but then, the piece is lightly mocking the person who's saying it.)

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It's from an ad campaign by Perdue chicken, featuring the founder, Frank Perdue.

n 1971, Perdue Farm embarked on its first major advertising campaign and had contracted the firm of Scali, McCabe Scoves.1 The firm came up with the idea of putting Perdue on television himself, with the tag line, "It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken."1

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This is a phenomenon that runs counter to the conventional wisdom of "like creates like."

Normally, one would expect a tender man (proprietor) to create a tender chicken.

But Frank Perdue was a notoriously tough, demanding CEO. So he "made a virtue of necessity" by advertising this fact, and said, "It takes a tough man to producer a tender chicken." That is, he is tough on his employees, so THEY will produce a tender chicken.

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