In the spirit of the holiday season, this is a series of short blog posts covering random things I have learned while doing Salesforce development, one for each day of Advent.

Are hot dogs sandwiches?

It’s a highly contested that brings up strong opinions. People site evidence from New York tax code and from an interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, hoping to fortify their position. Yet despite this evidence, the debate is far from over.

But instead of taking another position, I wanted to take this opportunity to dive into the hot dog’s position on the sandwich alignment chart. It sits right in the middle, as a true neutral between ingredients and structure. And by sitting in this position, it is on the fringe of not only the sandwich definition, but also the wrap defintion, and the taco definition.

A common argument I often hear is “If someone said they are bringing out a plate of sandwiches and they came out with hot dogs, wouldn’t you be surprised?” Of course, but the same thing applies if you replaced “sandwich” with “wrap” or “taco”. Hot dogs are at the nexus of these handheld meals.

If you were eating hot dog and the bun split into two, does that suddenly make it a sandwich? Or if you have a really doughy bun and you squeezed your hot dog to close the bun loop, is it suddenly a wrap? What if you didn’t have a bun, but you had flour tortillas - does that make your hot dog a taco?

With just minor adjustments, the hot dog can jump between so many categories. Instead of focusing on the differences, the unification power of the hot dog forces to look at our similarities.

We love to take sides, but sometimes we let the sides divide us. Tabs vs. Spaces. Agile vs Waterfall. Star Wars vs. Star Trek. PC vs. Mac. Digimon vs. Pokemon. Batman vs. Superman (GREAT movie btw).

So during this holiday season, when you take a bite into that traditional Christmas morning hot dog, take a lesson from the hot dog and try to remember the bridges that joins us together, instead of the breads that try to keep us apart.