On: Pending Comments Update

[pg]

Actually I don't think any of the outages have been caused by this. The prospect does add an edge of excitement to programming though. Gamification for programmers!

[rdl → pg]

There was one outage caused by a runaway which testing would have easily caught; I think about last year.

[cperciva → rdl]

Are you thinking of this outage from last month?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7261591

[rdl → cperciva]

There was something from >1y ago.

[maxerickson → rdl]

Probably this one:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5239673

(I remembered "new user" so was able to get a search to work...)

[pg → maxerickson]

Good catch. But strictly speaking that wasn't doing development in the repl, but repairing data. The live server is the only place you can repair data on the live server.

[rdl → maxerickson]

Yep. That's the kind of thing which is fun for hn but wouldn't be a good idea at all on a financial system -- where you optimize for least bad likely worst case, not best best case.

[morbius → pg]

That's interesting insight. I wonder what would happen if Bank of America took that same approach to pushing changes...

...what about the White House?

;)

[rdl → morbius]

If there is any world where the 95th percentile programmer at BOA is as good as pg, perhaps.