Our Flaky Test Was Actually a Daylight Saving Time Bug Hiding for Three Years
It failed twice a year, always on a Monday, and we kept clicking re-run.
Rachel Grant
@rachelgrantBackend engineer in Columbus, Ohio. I like boring code, short meetings, and deleting things nobody uses anymore.
9 articles679 clapsJoined Jun 2
Articles
Our Office Printer Was the Biggest Security Hole on the Network
A routine scan found it running firmware from 2016, an open admin page, and a copy of every document scanned for two years.
I Write the README Before I Write a Single Line of Code
It is the cheapest design review I know, and it has killed three of my own bad ideas.
I Bought a Refurbished 2019 Laptop for Work and I Am Not Giving It Back
It cost $410, compiles our service in 40 seconds more than the new one, and taught me what I actually need.
I Deleted 4,000 Lines of Our Codebase and the Test Suite Got Twice as Fast
Nobody asked me to remove the dead code, which is exactly why it had been sitting there for six years.
My Mom's Flip Phone Is the Best-Designed Device in Our House
It does five things, the battery lasts eight days, and she has never once asked me how to use it.
We Turned Off Work Notifications After 6pm for a Quarter. Nothing Broke.
Our team of eight ran the experiment for 13 weeks, kept a log, and the only casualty was a few unnecessary late-night replies.
Feature Flags Turned Our Codebase Into a Haunted House
We had 312 flags. Forty of them had been on or off for so long that nobody remembered what the other branch did.
The Code Review Comment I Stopped Writing, and What I Write Instead
"Why didn't you just..." felt helpful when I typed it and landed like a slap every single time.
