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Toptal.com:
The Art of War Applied To Software Development
Feb 19, 2016 @ 17:17:35

On the Toptal blog there's an interesting post where author Jose F. Maldonado takes the infamous book "The Art of War" and applies several principles to programming and development. He obviously doesn't go through the entire Art of War and relates each section, but he does pick out some good bits and makes some interesting parallels.

If you work in the software industry, it’s likely that you have heard about the divide and conquer design paradigm, which basically consists of recursively splitting a problem into two or more sub-problems (divide), until these become simple enough to be solved directly (conquer).

[...] However, the divide and conquer rule is not the only political strategy that can be applied to software development. Although politics and warfare have little to do with software development, just like politicians and generals, developers must lead subordinates, coordinate efforts between teams, find the best strategies to resolve problems, and administer resources. [...] Detailed below, you will a find a brief list of basic tactics and tips explained in the Art of War. They can probably be applied to your job in the software industry, or any of a number of other industries.

Included in his list of Art of War excerpts are topics like:

  • Time Is Crucial In Any Campaign
  • No Leadership, No Results
  • Teamwork And Motivation
  • Thinking Outside The Box

For each topic there's a reference to a chapter/paragraph location in the book, quotes from that section and his own thoughts on how this relates back to software development.

tagged: artofwar software development parallels opinion programming

Link: http://www.toptal.com/agile/art-of-war-software-development


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