We’ve all been there before: the trips to merge hell, the big bang releases that blew up in our faces, the lack of feature performance data that spawned a nightmare in dev. It’s part of the job we signed up for as software developers. Recently, we asked the developer community if they had any horror stories to share. Turns out, they do. Read and watch (if you can stomach it). Together, let’s overcome our nightmares with fearless feature delivery practices and tools.
“Turn It Off! Turn It Off!” A Terrifying Homegrown Flag!
Here's one nightmare I can recall… Join me and tell your developer horror story. @SplitSoftware #StopTheDevHorror pic.twitter.com/dQOr09T9up
— pmasse (@pmasse) October 27, 2022
Word of advice: ghost your homegrown feature flag tool for a feature management platform that attributes insightful data to every flag. You’ll limit unplanned downtime and database exorcisms.
Attack of the Killer Zombie Mutations, Yikes!
Share your developer horror story with us and include #StopTheDevHorror
If the scariest thing to you this Halloween is your upcoming release, Split is here to #StopTheDevHorror and turn that release into a relief! https://t.co/LvimcRxRej
— Split (@splitsoftware) October 27, 2022
Control and visibility of your feature flags are the difference between a successful percentage rollout and a mutation that eats your brain power.
This Cruise Ship of Horrors May Cause Sea Sickness.
I had to reach under a desk to pluck the remains of the VGA cable from the back of the server with a pair of pliers. All whilst the ship was rolling about as we crossed the Bay of Bisque. Had to keep pausing to avoid throwing up my breakfast.
— Workshopshed (@Workshopshed) October 28, 2022
Imagine if you could go on vacation and leave your work at home. Maybe if we keep gaining efficiencies through feature management and experimentation tools it’ll be possible some day? Let’s hope.
Sleep Tight, Don’t Let the Prod Bugs Bite.
unblock things, then the company shipped a fix, and then we deployed it to prod with the fix.
One of the longest, most stressful nights of my life.
@SplitSoftware#StopTheDevHorror
— Nick Taylor (he/him) (@nickytonline) October 28, 2022
Keep the bugs from biting with feature-level observability attached to every feature flag. If you release something that’s problematic, you can locate the issue faster than the time it takes to apply DEET.
Just Another Morning… In Merge Hell.
Last Hacktoberfest I accidentally merged a bunch of PRs in that I thought worked bc I was looking at the same deploy preview and…things didn’t look so good in the morning. What’s your dev horror story? #StopTheDevHorror @SplitSoftware
— BekahHW (@bekahhw) October 28, 2022
Merge early and often. Enjoy your morning joe without jitters.
No, It’s Not a Dream, It’s a Version Control Nightmare.
My first dev job didn’t use version control. I was asked to make a small update to a part the sr dev had been working on for weeks.
I forgot to pull down any changes first
I deleted everything. He wasn’t very happy about it. #StopTheDevHorror @SplitSoftware
— Drew.vue (@drewclemcr8) October 28, 2022
Make sure you get your rest, Drew. If you need any software development tools to help you sleep through the night, let us know. Counting sheep is much healthier than tallying versions.
The Branch that Broke the Developers Back.
I was a newbie on a project where you had to manually switch to and from the production DB. Walked away during a long deployment build, forgot to change the DB back. Spent days trying to figure out what was wrong with my branch. Production DB had about 45 new nonsense entries.
— Julia Seidman (@JuliaSeidman) October 28, 2022
Tip: when interviewing for a job, always ask about what feature management platform is on staff.
This Is Not a Joke, It’s a Horrifying Tale.
At the early days of company x (redacted) an engineer interrupted a meeting I was in to say: I deleted @elastic search production cluster. I said: Kidding? he said: no!
How? he said: I hit tab in the cli and press enter to the wrong environment #StopTheDevHorror @SplitSoftware— Patricio (Pato) Echagüe (@patricioe) October 28, 2022
Careful where you tab, sir. Seriously, that was scary!
Just When He Thought It Was Safe to Switch to Async…
Moved from WPF to Silverlight and had to switch to async code for the first time. App worked fine… except when the operations finished in different orders from farther away from our office or on slower machines.
— Matt Eland @ TechBash (@integerman) October 28, 2022
Thanks for sharing. No wonder people say moving is one of the most stressful things in life to go through. We’re here to help with your moves and migrations. Let us know if you need a hand.
Caution: You’ll Flip and Fear CCS Forever.
So here’s my story. I
CSS btw.#StopTheDevHorror #DeveloperCommunity
—
Chris D
(@saltnburnem) October 31, 2022
We’re glad you can still be friends with CSS after all of this, Chris. Patience and forgiveness is a developer virtue.
Got a Developer Horror Story to Tell?
At Split, we were founded by developers who were fed up with frustrating horror stories like these. It’s why our feature management and experimentation platform is designed to make the software delivery process quicker, safer, more visible, and a little less scary.
The spooky season might be over, but the horror continues for so many software engineering teams. If you have a developer horror story to tell, share it. Use #StopTheDevHorror. We’d love to hear from you. We’d also love to provide technology and support to help remove the stressful parts of your job.
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