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by klodolph 2431 days ago
> The correct answer is never to get into a state where rollback becomes necessary.

We occasionally roll out bad software. I know of no reasonable set of practices which can avoid it.

I honestly don’t understand how you would expect to make this possible without an obscene budget + insanely slow pace of development.

1 comments

“We occasionally roll out bad software.”

Honestly, as a profession we very rarely roll out anything else. It’s one of the reasons we should be designing systems and procedures that are fault-tolerant from the very start.

In this particular case study, a very small, simple, obvious, cheap step (enabling server B to talk to clients A as well as clients B) was not taken during design and development, nor caught addressed during testing, resulting in very large, complicated, costly failure which the culprits then tried to mask instead of owning it like the professionals they’re supposed to be.

That so many other techies should automatically switch into CYA mode when it’s not even their own fuckup that we’re talking about here is a damning indictment of modern developer culture’s attitude toward professional responsibility and personal liability.

It’s excuses all the way down.