Rango's Dog House

I’ve had bugs in specs before, which were then translated into the product. Today I had a bug in a ticket.

The caller provided a list of files with extremely long file names that needed to be imported to a database, and there was a duplicate file in the list. Easy to miss. I dodged a bullet because I didn’t use the list during the import. I found the files in a directory and used them instead of the list.

The bug made it all the way to the email threads about the change until finally somebody noticed. At which point they freaked out because the changes were to the production database. But I didn’t use the list in the ticket, so we were all copacetic.

I’m not the picture of cognitive acuity that I was in my 30’s, but I’m wiser. I make better decisions. 35-year-old me would have taken the info from the ticket directly just for expedience. Copy / paste into script / done. 56-year-old me is skeptical of everything because I’ve seen so many things fail that it’s my default assumption now.

I’m much more careful these days. That’s the senior part of senior software engineer.

My resume can be found here on my blog:

https://rangothedog.com/2013/09/17/matthew-meadows-resume/