Don’t run your tests with production data. Just don’t. Otherwise, your customers will end up with delightful emails like this:
In jobs past I was pretty cavalier with production data. I was never part of a major incident, but that was more due to luck than strong security controls and separation of concerns. Really thankful that my current employer takes this stuff as seriously as it deserves.
I wish I had the time and talent to write like Joel Spolsky. He’s one of my favorite people in the public sphere of software engineering. Here’s a couple articles I read yesterday, they’re both oldies but goodies:
You should check out Joel’s whole blog. It’s great.
I’m currently sitting at 998 reputation on Stack Overflow. Anyone willing to upvote some of my answers to push me over 1000?
Speaking of which, most software developers are rapid consumers of Stack Overflow, but how many give back by actually answering questions? About 8 years ago I started trying to spend a bit of time each week contributing, and while my consistency dropped off after a few months, it was a rewarding experience. It didn’t hurt that I was also trying to beef up my online presence during a season of job hunting.
My current workplace has an internal developer Q&A site which I’ve just recently started actively contributing to as well. For one, it’s good writing practice. And also because learning is best done in public.