Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #27 Trim the Toes to Fit the Shoes 削足适履

Act mechanically regardless of actual conditions.

Image credit: https://m.zqnf.com/zaoju/506.html

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

The Story

This story is from a book written in ~100BC.

Once a man went out to buy shoes. The shopkeeper handed him a pair that were small in size. Instead of asking for another pair, the man tried to cut his toes to fit the shoes.

The Meaning

I believe no one will chop off their toes to fit the shoes in real life. However, as a metaphor, it does convey reality. There are always some people who ignore specific conditions and try to make do unreasonably and improvise.

Examples in Software Development

In many software projects, I have seen so many silly acts like the foolish man in this idiom when they came to test automation and CI/CD. I will list a few here.

1. “Gartner recommends Rational Functional Tester (RFT)”

A CIO from a state government department selected IBM’s RFT as the test automation tool purely based on a Gartner Report 2013. At that time, I developed a successful automated test suite in Watir. After seeing it, the BA Lead said: “I have been wanting this for a decade”. However, with the “RFT movement”, I was asked to convert my working Watir tests into RFT.

I tried but realised that RFT was so slow and unstable. Frustrated, I even developed a few Selenium Java tests using RFT as an expensive Eclipse. Then I wrote a report with a list of problems, including this unbelievable one: it didn’t work on dual screens (this was not a joke. Amazingly, this issue is still on IBM’s website). I requested onsite support from IBM. The reply from IBM: there were no RFT test automation consultants available in Brisbane.

As a result, I declined the job of converting working Watir tests to RFT and left the project. Shortly after, a former colleague told me that the whole RFT thing was abandoned by this government department. The CIO left with embarrassment (a few staff questioned him directly at one town hall meeting, not only just RFT, but also the uses of other Rational products. The audience laughed).

2. “Have to use Cucumber”