What’s the most embarrassing bug you’ve encountered during a project, and how did it shape your coding practices?
Honestly, the most embarrassing bug I ever shipped was caused by a single misplaced character — one tiny = that should’ve been ==. It was inside a conditional that controlled whether a data-cleanup script actually ran… and instead of checking a flag, I was assigning it.
The result?
The script ran on every environment.
Including production. 😬
Within seconds, logs were lighting up like a Christmas tree. Thankfully, our backups were solid and we restored everything quickly, but it was still one of those “I will never emotionally recover from this” moments.
The fun part? The fix took about five seconds.
The lessons stuck permanently:
- Tests aren’t optional — especially around destructive actions.
I added explicit tests for any code path that deletes, cleans, or migrates data. Even simple logic gets a check now.
- Linters and static analysis are your friends.
I set up rules to flag accidental assignments in conditionals so that exact mistake literally can’t happen again.
**3. Slow down before merging.
Future-me deserves a minute of present-me’s attention.
Even when the change “seems tiny,” I do one more read-through, especially for scripts that can affect production.