[pg]

I think almost any programmer running a service used by hundreds of thousands of people would hate the idea of it being down. It's part of building things to want them to work properly.

[simonholroyd]

I certainly sympathize with the stress, I've been there. But programmers are much more effective at resolving downtime in low stress situations, so the best strategy is neutralizing those high-stress moments and just accepting that "downtime happens".

[mcartyem]

Is there anything you believe could have helped avoid HN being down in the way it did?

(Sorry to hijack this post; I doubt you'd see this question in the proper HN downtime post.)

[Donito]

Quote from pg: "For some reason I didn't check the comments after the surgery to see if they were in the right place. I must have been distracted by something."

Short answer to your question: Test the fix after deploying it on production :)