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dev-disasters

Everybody has one. Here are 11 of them.

Real outages, real bad code, real 2am pages, told by the people who caused them. Nobody gets named. Nobody gets dunked on. That's the whole deal.

011 Error ♡ 1 // 1

A single typo in a cleanup script led to the loss of production, staging, and backup servers, leaving a team in silence and panic.

Destructive Cleanup Script · told by ramblinggeekuk

010 Error

A backup automation program ran flawlessly for years until a code review revealed a crucial if statement was backwards, leading to a sudden crash.

Backup Automation Code Crash · told by anonymous

005 Error

A simple indexing mistake in a loop led to a catastrophic failure, crashing all computers in a data center.

Data Center Crash from C++ Code Error · told by anonymous

006 Error

A simple indexing error in a loop led to a catastrophic crash of all computers in a data center.

Data Center Crash from Faulty Loop · told by anonymous

007 Error

A software fault in an aging system caused a nationwide telephone outage, leaving millions without service for hours.

Telephone Switching System Crash · told by anonymous

008 Error

Fiddling with critical database files led to a weekend of data recovery and a stern reminder about the importance of backups.

Corrupted DBF Files Without Backup · told by anonymous

003 Error

A careless merge led to overwritten code and variable confusion, creating a production mess.

Version Control Chaos · told by anonymous

002 Error

A lack of version control and testing environments led to a live app failure, disrupting employees' work unexpectedly.

Monolithic App Breaks During Work Hours · told by anonymous

001 Error

A hidden script replaced variable names with similar-looking characters, causing thousands of errors and a frustrating investigation.

Obfuscated Variable Names in WordPress · told by anonymous

Showing all 9

Your turn

Somewhere in your git history is a commit you still think about

Write it down. Badly, if you want. I'll fix the typos and I will never put your employer's name anywhere near it. Some of these turn into videos, and when one of yours does, you get asked first.

Post anonymously if you'd rather. No name is ever required.

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