> Then I heard word there are other empires. Some were run by tyrannical rulers with strange idiosyncrasies. I began to hear strange whispers, like the next empire over doesn't write any tests, and their only quality assurance process was an entire off-shore team manually clicking through the application. Or that an empire in a distant land has pyramids of software that touch the sky, crafted by thousands of people over decades.
Other empires besides the British (with plantations of manual QA) and the Egyptians (pyramids): the Mongols (ride in out of nowhere to bombard you with requirements and have ridden away before you figured out whether you actually need to deal with them or not), the Spanish (who insist that El Dorado isn't a fictious utopia of a project with full test coverage, full CI/CD, perfect monitoring, but will add every linter and bit of friction they can find to try to get there), the Japanese (who go to floors and campuses across the oceans to commit career suicide by yelling at random stakeholders that they have displeased The Emperor), the Chinese (their floors are always quiet, good luck finding your way through the Forbidden City of Zoom meetings without a map)...
I really enjoyed how you ran with this thought, it made me chuckle. I've been warring with the Mongols for some time and if history is anything to go off, things aren't looking great.
Other empires besides the British (with plantations of manual QA) and the Egyptians (pyramids): the Mongols (ride in out of nowhere to bombard you with requirements and have ridden away before you figured out whether you actually need to deal with them or not), the Spanish (who insist that El Dorado isn't a fictious utopia of a project with full test coverage, full CI/CD, perfect monitoring, but will add every linter and bit of friction they can find to try to get there), the Japanese (who go to floors and campuses across the oceans to commit career suicide by yelling at random stakeholders that they have displeased The Emperor), the Chinese (their floors are always quiet, good luck finding your way through the Forbidden City of Zoom meetings without a map)...