Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #27 Trim the Toes to Fit the Shoes 削足适履
Act mechanically regardless of actual conditions.
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…
