Faggot vs single sticks - Same story different moral

A different moral for the same story
We all are familiar with the below story (story 1),

Story 1:
A father had a family of sons who were perpetually quarreling among themselves. When he failed to heal their disputes by his exhortations, he determined to give them a practical illustration of the evils of disunion.

One day he told his sons to bring him a bundle of sticks. When they had done so, he placed the faggot into the hands of each of them in succession, and ordered them to break it in pieces. They tried with all their strength, and were not able to do it.

He next opened the faggot, took the sticks separately, one by one, and again put them into his sons’ hands, upon which they broke them easily. He then addressed them in these words:

“My sons, if you are of one mind, and unite to assist each other, you will be as strong as this faggot, uninjured by all the attempts of your enemies; but if you are divided among yourselves, you will be broken as easily as these sticks.”

Let me change the story for our programmers (in fact every soul).
Story 2:
A farmer asked his sons to plow his fields. Farmer’s sons looked at the field and felt discouraged as the farmer had over few hundreds acres of field. Son’s decided not to ploy as it looked impossible for them.

Knowing this the farmer called all his sons and told them to bring a bundle of sticks. When they had done so, he placed the faggot into the hands of each of them in succession, and ordered them to break it in pieces. They tried with all their strength, and were not able to do it.

He next opened the faggot, took the sticks separately, one by one, and again put them into his sons’ hands, upon which they broke them easily. He then addressed them in these words:

“My sons, if the task is mammoth, break it into smaller pieces and then solve it. Break it into smaller and smaller parts that it becomes easier”

Story 2 can teach you a lot of things. Can you save $1000 using budgeting? Looks impossible. Can you save $100 next month through proper budgeting? Yes I can do. Then repeat this for next 10 to 20 weeks to save over $1000.

Why it is important for programmers?

This can be applied to everyone dealing with a problem. We call it breaking the bigger problems into different logical cubes. Let’s take an example. Say idealwebtools.com is not down and not working, a mammoth task to make it work. Now divide into different logical modules,

1. Are you able to ping it? Checking the working of DNS
2. Is the request going to the server? Add a test plain html file and try to display it.
3. Is mySQL working?
4. Is the problem with .htaccess?

Once you break it into various logical modules the problem is simplified. As programmers (infact as human) we should try to break the sticks one by one than faggot.

Tommorow’s story
The Turtle and the Rabbit Run a Race

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• Stories that inspired me - PartI (The Law of the Seed)

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