A backup you have not restored is a hope
Nightly dumps had been running for weeks. The first real test was not whether the files existed — it was whether an encrypted field could still be read after a restore.
backups · postgres · operations3 pieces
Writing
One problem per piece, from work that actually shipped: what broke, what the fix was, and what it cost to find out.
01
2 min
Replaying two years of bank exports before trusting a new importer
A new ledger's import engine looked correct and passed its tests. Replaying every archived bank export through it found six bugs that tests never would have.
testing · data · postgresA deploy script that refuses
Three applications crash-looped at once from a change that passed build, typecheck and 69 tests. The fix was not more tests — it was a deploy that checks the thing it is about to ship.
deployment · docker · operations