Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #15 Those Who Flee 50 Steps Laugh at Those Who Flee 100 Steps（五十步笑百步）

The pot calling the kettle black.

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This article is one of the “Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals” series.

Story

King LiangHui asked Mencius (a famous philosopher): “I am a civilian-caring king. Why didn’t the population of my kingdom grow much?” Mencius told King LiangHui a story.

“Two armies met on the battlefield. The soldiers of the defeated side, throwing away their helmets and armour, flee for their lives. Some of them flee 50 steps and then stop, while others flee 100 steps and stop. Then, those who flee 50 steps laugh at those who flee 100 steps for their cowardice. Your Majesty, do you think it is right to laugh?”

Upon hearing this, King LiangHui struck the table and said, “Of course not. No matter whether they flee 50 steps or 100 steps, they are deserters just the same.”

Mencius smiled and said: “Your Majesty, since you understand this, you can not expect your population to be larger than that of your neighbouring kingdoms.” （hinting that King LiangHui’s kingdom might be just slightly better than their neighbours, but still not a good king)

Meaning

The equivalent idiom in English: “The pot calling the kettle black”.

Examples in Software Development

Once I was working on a government project as the test lead, and the development was outsourced to a local software consulting company (a Microsoft Gold Partner). One selling point of this company was that it was “Agile”. However, their understanding of Agile was just ‘user stories in Jira’, ‘Velocity (story points)” and Retrospectives, no real stuff.