When Master Foo and his student Nubi journeyed among the sacred
sites, it was the Master's custom in the evenings to offer public
instruction to Unix neophytes of the towns and villages in which they
stopped for the night.
On one such occasion, a methodologist was among those
who gathered to listen.
“If you do not repeatedly profile your code for hot spots
while tuning, you will be like a fisherman who casts his net in an
empty lake”, said Master Foo.
“Is it not, then, also true”, said the methodology
consultant, “that if you do not continually measure your
productivity while managing resources, you will be like a fisherman who
casts his net in an empty lake?”
“I once came upon a fisherman who just at that moment let
his net fall in the lake on which his boat was floating”, said
Master Foo. “He scrabbled around in the bottom of his boat for
quite a while looking for it”.
“But”, said the methodologist, “if
he had dropped his net in the lake, why was he looking in the
boat?”
“Because he could not swim”, replied Master Foo.
Upon hearing this, the methodologist was enlightened.