> Of course dev is not 1000% identical to the very last bit, I’m not going to argue that. … Like I said, we’ve yet to experience a prod-only bug that didn't reproduce in our dev env.
…
> You can cut out many of the issues and frustrations surrounding testing in staging by actually practicing continuous integration. Build mechanisms and policy that severely limit the frequency and distances that staging systems diverge from prod and I wager you’d get much much further than the comfortable status quo of merging to staging, manual and automated integrating, and then a cadence-based release to prod. So yeah: test in prod! Just don't use your real prod unless you have to.
I’ve seen plenty of staging envs that look nothing like prod, and that what I’m calling the real sham.
> Of course dev is not 1000% identical to the very last bit, I’m not going to argue that. … Like I said, we’ve yet to experience a prod-only bug that didn't reproduce in our dev env. …
> You can cut out many of the issues and frustrations surrounding testing in staging by actually practicing continuous integration. Build mechanisms and policy that severely limit the frequency and distances that staging systems diverge from prod and I wager you’d get much much further than the comfortable status quo of merging to staging, manual and automated integrating, and then a cadence-based release to prod. So yeah: test in prod! Just don't use your real prod unless you have to.
I’ve seen plenty of staging envs that look nothing like prod, and that what I’m calling the real sham.