production-software - Julio Merino (jmmv.dev)

Encode your assumptions

The point of this post is simple and I’ll spoil it from the get go: every time you make an assumption in a piece of code, make such assumption explicit in the form of an assertion or error check. If you cannot do that (are you sure?), then write a detailed comment. In fact, I’m exceedingly convinced that the amount of assertion-like checks in a piece of code is a good indicator of the programmer’s expertise.

February 7, 2019 · Tags: bazel, production-software, readability, software
Continue reading (about 4 minutes)

Production software: Series wrap-up

We have reached the end of the Production software series. Before moving onto other topics, let’s wrap it up as is customary by listing all the posts so far: Series introduction Be wary of assertions Constants will bite you Hide new features behind flags Logging Identifying your builds But this does not represent the end of this topic’s coverage in this blog. If you have suggestions for further posts in this same area, don’t hesitate to suggest them!

October 31, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 1 minute)

Production software: Identifying your builds

The scenario of the day: a binary you deployed to production two months ago has been running fine and dandy since then… until today, when the report of a strange and concerning crash arrived. Nothing really unusual: these things happen all the time and need to be dealt with. But you, as the proud developer of the software, attempt to reproduce the problem on your own system with the most recent sources and… cannot do so: the issue escapes all your tests (again, not unusual).

October 28, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 3 minutes)

Production software: Logging

Quoting the Wikipedia as is becoming customary: logging is the cutting, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or logs onto trucks or skeleton cars. Huh, wait… I think I got that definition wrong. Let me try my own: Logging is the recording of application activity on-the-fly onto a reliable storage system. Having this functionality in your software is something you don’t think about until you need to debug an issue and, well, then it is too late.

October 24, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 7 minutes)

Production software: Hide new features behind flags

Following on the topic of run-time changeability from the previous post, it’s now the time to talk about new features and the process of deploying them. Scenario: your developer team has been hacking non-stop for the last few months on a really anticipated feature. Such feature has been developed on a branch all along and never seen the light of production. Until now: the upcoming release of the software has the branch merged in and the shiny new code built into the binary ready to roll to production.

October 21, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 3 minutes)

Production software: Constants will bite you

Early on in your career as a developer, you are told to never put constant values in the code and instead define those separately using a self-descriptive name. For example, instead of doing this: def modify_remote_file(...): contents = get_remote_file(server_url, file_name, timeout=60) ... put_remote_file(server_url, file_name, contents, timeout=60) You would do this: # Maximum amount of time a request on the file server can take. FILE_SERVER_TIMEOUT = 60 def modify_remote_file(...): contents = get_remote_file(server_url, file_name, timeout=FILE_SERVER_TIMEOUT) .

October 17, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 3 minutes)

Production software: Be wary of assertions

As the Wikipedia puts it (emphasis mine): An assertion is a predicate (a true–false statement) placed in a program to indicate that the developer thinks that the predicate is always true at that place. If an assertion evaluates to false at run-time, an assertion failure results, which typically causes execution to abort. On the programmer’s side, assertions are invaluable in writing readable code: they provide a mechanism with which developers can explicitly state their thoughts and expectations in the form of code instead of comments.

October 14, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 3 minutes)

Production software: Series introduction

Hello again! After a pretty busy week at EuroBSDCon 2013 and a week of vacations right after—which made me miss the two posts due last Thursday and Monday—it is time to start a new series titled “Production software”. Originally, I had intended this series to be called “Production engineering”, but the definition that the Wikipedia gives for such term does not really convey the contents of the upcoming posts. So what will we go through?

October 10, 2013 · Tags: production-software
Continue reading (about 1 minute)

Posts: production-software