Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #30 To give up halfway (半途而废)

Fall by the wayside.

Image credit: https://m.cy1990.com/haocihaoju/23478.html

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

Story

Once upon a time, there was a man called Yue Yangzi. Encouraged by his wife, he left home to visit scholars and enrich his knowledge.

A year later, he came back home suddenly.

“Why have you returned?” asked his wife in surprise, “You’ve only spent one year studying with scholars.”

“I came back because I missed you very much,” Yangzi replied.

Without saying anything, his wife took a pair of scissors and went to the loom at which she had worked. Pointing at the half-done brocade, she proclaimed, “This brocade is woven from the finest silk. I wove one strand after another to produce the brocade. Now if I cut it, all my previous work will be wasted. It’s the same with your studies. Now, you’ve stopped halfway. Isn’t it the same as cutting the brocade on the loom?”

Deeply moved by what she said, Yangzi again left home to continue his studies.

Several years later, he finished his studies and became a well-respected scholar.

The Meaning

A similar idiom in English: “Fall by the wayside”.

Examples in Software Development

In nearly every software company (and IT division in an organization) I consulted over the last decade, there were attempts at test automation before. Quite often, a few times, but all failed.

My definition of End-to-End Test Automation Success is quite simple: at least dozens of automated tests are still running daily, and the team trust them. One veteran tester once told me, “This is the fourth time this company has tried to implement test automation. Every single time, people were excited at the beginning; Not long after, no one was interested in it anymore.”