Continuous Integration: A War Story

The article uses the World War II Soviet Anti-Tank Dog project as a cautionary tale for why Continuous Integration matters in software development. The dogs failed in real combat because they were trained only on stationary Soviet tanks using diesel, but German tanks moved and used gasoline, causing dogs to kill Soviet soldiers. The author argues that testing early and often with small batches, like using one dog first, would have revealed problems and limited damage. Continuous Integration means integrating work frequently to get early feedback, avoiding the big failure the Soviets experienced.