Uff, I’m finally done with my talk at jsDay 2026!
And honestly? It went at least good. People showed up, they asked questions… what more could you...
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One time I deployed a change which not only took down our site, but directly caused Heroku to go into a "yellow" state on their status page. Not only was our site down, they suspended our account in the process.
This was, I swear, a matter of incompetence, not malice.
This is an absolutely epic bug 💥❤️
that is mah job
Hey checklist time for me lol
To be fair, I am still new in the DEV world, so it makes sense. You could also add that if you are a developer:
Thanks! Great post :D
Hahaha Francis, you’re 100% a software developer 😄
And that 5-hour debugging session? I felt that 😄
(although honestly… sometimes 5 hours is still optimistic, especially with 7-year-old code 😂)
I had worst. One time I try fixing a bug for 12 hours straight and it only took me a good night sleep to the next day where it was 3 lines of code 💀
5 hours is too generous if you get lucky lol
😄
Also, please take a moment to appreciate the incredibly dumb hashtag I added with a typo: #devlive 😂
At least no one can accuse me of having the whole post generated by an LLM now 😄
How do they even know to begin with other than GPTzero?
Hahaha yeah, I guess that’s the only “method” people have 😄
To be fair, I do use an LLM to fix my English typos (and sometimes I even write in Polish first and let it translate 😄 But then you really have to watch it so it doesn’t oversimplify everything).
But in Polish I actually write really well. And at some point I even tested it, pasted my own text into GPTZero… and it confidently said it was 90% AI-generated 😂
Same here - maybe Elon Musk snuck into my house at night and gave me a neuralink
So true! I think I’ve made every single one of these mistakes — some of them more than once 😄
But that’s really the cost of learning: no mistakes, no lessons that actually stick.
And honestly, @javz’s example is exactly why I stopped touching CSS altogether!
Looking forward to your recap of jsDay 2026 🚀
Exactly, Pascal!
That’s why we can laugh about it — because the truth is: the only one who makes no mistakes is the one who does nothing 😂
I love Munich Airport, so many great memories there. I'm way too attached to Munich in general, I love the city! And don't even get me started about Italy - it's an absolutely gorgeous country. ♥️
Chilling at airports is one of my favorite things. When my flight gets delayed or I've got a long layover, I see everyone else stressing and I'm just like, "yeah, whatever." I like it here. I've got my laptop and my phone... I could stay here forever 😂
There's one better think than chilling on the airport. Chilling on the Piazza Maggiore in Bologna and doing absolutely nothing. Which is exactly what I'm doing RIGHT NOW 😀
Imma just put a request in at HQ to come here for
vacationIT purposes(I'll just say a new IDE agent is being launched here)
"For IT purposes" 😂
So specific they'd be insane not to approve it 😁
Guys, where are we heading next for “IT purposes”? 😄 Maybe the Maldives? 😂
I'm down! ✅️
🧨 You were afraid to touch code that looks terrible… but works
--- instead ---
I am not afraid to make a code that looks terrible... but works
So I created a M||D||JS
dev.to/pengeszikra/mdjs-mordorjs-1mon
Hahaha I love it :D BTW I really like this page: dayssincelastjavascriptframework.com/
finally the demo video is upgraded.
Awesome post, can relate so much!
I keep a whiteboard next to my desk with a "How did this ever work" counter. Each time I'm debugging something and think to myself "how on earth did this ever work?", I add one to the counter. It's become a bit of a meme in my work place where people get curious if they notice me adding one and ask me to explain what obscure bug I'm working on now :D
Hahahaha I love this! 😄
If I wasn’t working remotely, I’d 100% have the same thing on my whiteboard starting Monday 😂
at my desk i have a "days until being fired" counter
The line that hits: "You just slowly back away and hope it stays that way." That's not incompetence, that's pattern recognition. You've learned that some bugs fix themselves and asking why is a trap. The real developer instinct isn't understanding everything. It's knowing which mysteries to leave unsolved.
I love that part about leaving some mysteries unresolved! 😄
I think this post just confirmed something for me:
I’m absolutely not the kind of developer who earns XP by breaking prod.
My work lives in a different ecosystem—the “if this ever breaks, something foundational has gone wrong” ecosystem.
So while I haven’t dropped a database or fixed a bug by accident… I have spent years designing systems so those things don’t happen in the first place.
Which probably disqualifies me from the “chaos‑driven dev” badge, but I’ll survive 😄
Depends on the project. I think all of us would love to spend years designing bulletproof systems.
But in the real world, we show up to work and get a 7-year-old codebase written by juniors, with tasks that were due yesterday.
Been in too many production war trenches, these all hit too close to home bahahaha
Exactly 😄
And with all the extra examples in the comments, my post is starting to feel a bit poor now 😂
btw, is that you in the cover photo? i'd believe if you say yes haha
Hahaha nooo, it's just how GPT see me 😂
The 'afraid to touch code that works but looks terrible' one hits different when you're the person who wrote that code six months ago and can't remember why any of it is structured that way. The service worker fallback story from the airport is actually a great example of real engineering instinct though - using unexpected downtime to build resilience into your system instead of just waiting it out. That's the difference between someone who codes and someone who thinks in systems. Also, 'blamed the backend if you're frontend and vice versa' - I've literally been on both sides of that conversation in the same standup when working on full-stack automation pipelines.
That last one really got me 😄 That’s actually a bonus, you always end up blaming yourself instead of someone else 😂
During one “quick 1-point ticket” you thought: “I’ll just tweak this CSS real quick” and somehow ended up deep in a 6-hour rabbit hole fighting specificity, flexbox, and your will to live.
and congrats on the talk!
Thanks!!! 🥰
TOTALLY 😄
Are you… by any chance me? 😂
Haha I feel a lot of folks can relate to this one, a painful and humbling experience
“You fixed a bug accidentally” is too real 😅
The best part is when you don’t touch anything for 10 minutes just to make sure it doesn’t break again.
Also would add:
🧪 You printed logs so many times that your console became the actual debugging tool instead of your brain
and still… it somehow works.
Hahaha the logging part is 100% true 😄
I once helped a junior debug something and eventually decided to run his branch locally…
He asked if he should commit his logs for me first 😂
That’s next-level 😄 committing logs as a “feature”
Honestly, that’s the moment you realize logs aren’t temporary anymore… they’re part of the system.
Also feels like there’s one more to add:
🧩 You remove a random line to test something…
and suddenly everything starts working
so you don’t question it
you just commit and move on
“fix: removed something suspicious”
and pray no one asks what it was 😅
oh great, it is now confirmed i am a dev :)
and my humble addition might be "it works on my machine", right?
Looking forward to your post on the conf.
Cheers.
“It works on my machine” is an absolute classic 😂
Alright just want to say that I enjoyed reading this. Really raw unfiltered words. Glad you came on top of feed.
Hahaha same here, I’m really happy it made it to the top feed 😄
I have one fit for current hype: You're only a real developer if you let AI figure something out for 5 minutes and burn 10k tokens in the process that you could have done by changing two lines of code. Which you knew exactly how to change in the first place.
Hahaha exactly 😄 or “generate me a whole project,” when you could’ve done the same thing just as fast with the CLI 😂
Haha, I had one of those idiot/genius sessions last Thursday, but with a bug: it's user error! No wait it IS a bug, just not the one we think it is.... But wait, then it's ALSO user error... Oh no wait that's also another bug! And actually we still haven't REALLY been able to reproduce it, so this might continue for a while xD it's a pretty critical system part too 😅
It reminded me again to NOT draw conclusion the first time you think you can draw conclusions. Me: But I'm really really sure! The code: Hahaha nope, I fooled you!
Hahaha, beautiful 😄 I always assume there’s no such thing as “user error.”
The user will do something dumb eventually, so the app should be built in a way that makes it impossible 😂
The best part about lists like these is that every developer reads them thinking 'that's definitely not me' while doing at least three of them simultaneously. Honestly though, the real test isn't any of these - it's whether you can resist refactoring someone else's code during a code review when the PR just needs an approval.
I don’t know if they really think “that’s not me” 😄 judging by the comments, most people are like “yep, that’s me”… and then add a few more of their own examples 😂
I would enhance the role to Developer on Production Support - then you would do few more interesting stuffs at the back.
Hahaha I’m crying 😄 I’ve never worked in support myself, but I’m in one of those teams where support comes to me when they’re completely stuck… and yep, that’s exactly how it goes 😂
I’m convinced being a “real developer” is just:
Loved this, especially the vibe — felt like reading a conversation with other devs 😂
Hahaha exactly 😄 there are so many great examples here, I’m starting to think I’ll need to make a part 2 soon 😂
Have you ever broken production at least once?
Yes, multiple times. Most often because of third-party integrations where networking/firewall rules or authentication didn’t behave as expected. Once I actually broke production on purpose: I reviewed a colleague’s changes, predicted exactly where it would fail, told him, and he insisted on deploying anyway. It broke shortly after, and he ended up having to explain it to management.
Have you ever fixed a bug completely by accident?
Not directly through intentional bug fixes, but I’ve had several cases where upgrading legacy dependencies or systems unexpectedly resolved issues that had been around for a long time.
During debugging, have you ever thought: “This makes absolutely no sense”?
Yes. Especially when going through older codebases written before any real standards or consistent practices were in place.
Have you ever been afraid to touch code that looks terrible… but works?
Yes. COBOL systems fall into that category for me—I would avoid touching that code unless absolutely necessary.
Have you ever written code that worked perfectly locally… but failed in production?
Yes. Even with Docker in place. In most cases it comes down to environment variables not matching, or network/policy restrictions in production.
Have you ever accidentally dropped a database (or part of it)?
I’ve never dropped an entire database. But I once accidentally reset the passwords for more than 2000 users during a normal password recovery flow. Luckily we had backups.
Have you ever said: “It works on my machine”?
Yes, in the first year of my career. Not something I would say today.
Have you ever blamed the backend (if frontend) or the frontend (if backend)?
No. I’ve always worked as full-stack, so I’ve typically been responsible for both sides.
During debugging, have you ever thought both: “I’m an idiot” and then “Wait… I’m a genius”?
Yes. That kind of back-and-forth is basically standard during debugging.
Thanks for the summary 😄 that’s exactly how it is!
It doesn’t mean we’re incompetent, it just means that after years of experience, all of us have gone through these situations at some point.
That’s just real life, that’s what this job looks like… and honestly, I feel like with AI it’s only going to get even more like this.
Attempt → Failure → Frustration (Pressure Drop ⬇️) → Reflection → Fix → Success → Triumph (Pressure Stabilization ⬆️) → Then... "Wait, why don't I make it even better?" → New Attempt 🔄
It's a delicious vicious cycle.
May you remain creative, outstanding, and blessed with ever more success.
Yes, exactly — that’s precisely how it looks 😂
The full emotional rollercoaster, every single time 😄
The only if gatekeeping drives me up the wall. 😅
I've been guilty of it too early in my career, I definitely thought real developers use X or real developers don't use Y. Looking back, I wasn't protecting some sacred standard. I was insecure. Drawing a circle around myself and calling everyone outside not real was just... coping.
What gets me now is how arbitrary it all is. Vim vs VS Code. Tabs vs spaces. Backend vs frontend. None of it matters. The code runs or it doesn't. Users care or they don't.
The impostor syndrome part is real though. Even now, after years of writing code, there are days I feel like I've tricked everyone. The only thing that helps is realizing: the real developers I used to look up to? They feel it too. Everyone does.
Thanks for writing this. The industry needs more you're enough and less only if. 🙌
Exactly this! 🙌
And when I think back, I remember going through the exact same phase.
Luckily it didn’t last long for me, because I was surrounded by really great devs who were constantly breaking those “rules”. Like, the best developer I knew at the time… used a light theme in their IDE 😄 which completely blew my mind back then.
And I remember asking another genius “tabs or spaces?” and he just said:
“Depends on the project I’m joining.”
That was such a wake-up moment 😄
So yeah, I snapped out of it pretty quickly, but totally — it’s exactly like you said.
Right after I finished college, I felt I was awesome. Your article reminded me of those days when "I swear it works in my machine" moments that build character. Now, 25 years later, I still feel I am awesome, but with more experience. And yes, I also have misterious code that somehow works, so.... if it ain't broken, don't fix it. (I think I already told you about this rule no?)
Hahaha yes, I remember that golden rule 😄
And about confidence, when I was starting my career, I actually put my JavaScript level as “very good” on my CV…
Now I just write “good” 😂
This is awesome 🔥 I love how you turned those “painful in the moment, funny later” situations into something so relatable.
Also, thank you so much for the mention; it genuinely means a lot 😍 Your version hits differently, especially with the real-life chaos from the trip mixed in. The “fallbacks for EVERYTHING” part is way too real… that’s pure survival mode 😂
Exactly 😄 the titles are similar, but the topics are approached quite differently.
And that “fallback for everything” turned out to be pure gold — at the conference I didn’t even turn on the internet on my laptop 😂
great list I can mostly relate to (i.e. I still haven't ever erased a production DB to date, 25+ years and counting), but I feel like this one is missing (or hitting home to me):
fixed the minute after informed about the issue ... yet that was me: you either learn from mistakes or die repeating these 😇
Unfortunately I know this way too well and I’ve seen far too many things like this 😅
That’s exactly why I’m currently out exploring Bologna… with Teams proactively muted 😂
This is painfully accurate 😄 I feel like breaking production is basically a rite of passage at this point.
Also, nothing builds confidence like fixing a bug by accident and then pretending you knew what you were doing the whole time 😂
Exactly 😄 I think most of us have broken production at some point, luckily it’s usually something small 😂
And well… that’s what rollbacks are for 😅
I checked your linkedin account. look like i fall in love with you.
What's a service worker? And ik Hadil, she is amazing with writing articles!
It lets your app work offline 😄
Congrats on the talk! About fixing a bug by accident, I can't recall that ever happening to me. But introducing bugs by modifying totally unrelated code (at least it seemed so) - that's happened a couple of times 😅
I know that one 😄
Some time ago I made a completely “neutral” change… and of course something exploded somewhere else 😂
This was one piece of writing that sums up all what a developer goes through! Happy deleting prod databases!
Deleting prod databases is already next level 😄
Although I’ve heard about such a case… luckily there was a backup 😂
Yes, thanks to the back-up, the job survived🫣
_[[
first: “I’m an idiot.”
then: “Wait… I’m a genius.”
Sometimes multiple times in a loop. ]]_
That's me all day long mostly in the idiot part occasionally I have my genius moments only for my idiot side to go "shut up you're an idiot!" imposter syndrome round and round we go.
Ohhh I know this feeling 😄 I hate that phase when I don’t yet know what to do next…
There’s always that quiet fear that I won’t figure it out, even though I always have so far.
According to your list I'm a real software developer. What do you think about adding when you're reviewing code and find a bit of genius functionality you forgot you wrote and you're baffled by how good of a developer you were?
Oh I felt that 😄 I once built a beautiful, multi-layer form validation system and was genuinely proud of it.
Then the client said: “Actually… let users do whatever they want.”
Deleting those validators hurt 😂
wth i did almost all, the funniest thing was timezone bugs i was once building form where date is included whenever i set my date to my local timezone and save it, it will add 5 more hours 😂
Haha, dates and timezones are honestly the ultimate nightmare of software development 😄
I got told the other day "You’re a Real Software Developer Only If you are uptodate and using all the AI technologies"
Happy not to be a real software developer if that is the case. Let me rather break prod through my own actions and not those of some agent I don't care to understand.
Life is peaceful in the slow and steady lane.
Haha I sometimes feel like if you take a 6-month break from following AI trends, you won’t miss anything… because after 6 months everything will be completely different anyway 😂
haha, these are too relatable. I remember that project which I don't touch because It just works and touching it would for sure explode everything. 😂
Exactly 😄
That’s how it looks sometimes — either you don’t touch it at all, or you’re thinking really hard how to add something while making absolutely sure nothing else breaks 😂
You're a real developer only if:
🧨 You spent 4 hours "simplifying" a 10-minute task 😅
Hahaha totally! 😄
Or spending two hours writing a script to “simplify” something that would take 10 minutes to do manually 😂
Wrote the code for a feature. Completed it, ran the code successfully on the first ever try. My brain in full skeptical mode saying to me "it ran successfully for the very first time how is it possible?"
Haha I swear, that’s me 😄 The moment something works on the first try, I immediately assume something is very wrong 😂
I'm not a real software developer.
Haha oh no, I'm so sorry 😅
It's OK - I have my niches - I contribute documentation and simpler code fixes to the FOSS community and advocate for the Linux OS and Right to Repair. But yes - I'll leave the complex coding to you!
Never technically broke prod because when I was younger there were no established staging processes yet, so everything was prod and nothing was, and ever since we have staging, prod is so resilient and failsafe that you can't break it, not even intentionally. But can definitely check the rest, one way or the other.
Oh I remember those times too 😄 just uploading things straight to the server via FTP and calling it a day.
Don’t miss it at all 😂
Debugging one is so true, I'm 15 years in and never dropped a database table though, I intend to keep it that way too 😆
Sounds like a frontend dev for sure 😆
Hahaha nope backend .net developer. I can do front end development (react or angular) if I was forced to. I would rather help out with UI automation though
Hahaha I honestly can’t believe someone made it 15 years without accidentally dropping at least a column 😂
I used to work with .NET too, more like a “frontend” exposing models and controllers, while backend folks handled the heavy logic.
And I still remember a junior who dropped the entire production database thinking it was staging 😅
A bit off-topic, but Slavic languages are amazing for certain kinds of expressions. Maybe it’s because I’m not a native English speaker, but I feel like some phrases just can’t be translated properly.
For example: Kto produkcji nie wy*ebie, ten nie zazna szczęścia w niebie, there’s just no way to make that sound the same in English 😅🤣
Exactly 😄😄
That’s why the Polish version just had to stay 😂
When you were confident that your code change was simple enough to skip writing a unit test for it, and reality proved you wrong.
Oh YES!!! 😄
“This is a small change, it definitely won’t affect anything”… and then half the project explodes — I’ve been there 😂
This is one of those statements that sounds simple but hides a lot of truth behind it. You’re not a “real” software developer because you know a framework or can ship code quickly—you become one when you start thinking in systems, not just features.
It’s when you’ve debugged production issues at 3 AM, learned to respect edge cases the hard way, and understood that most bugs come from assumptions, not syntax. It’s when you can read legacy code without panic, design for failure instead of perfection, and accept that maintainability matters more than cleverness.
At that point, coding is just the surface—the real skill is decision-making under constraints.
Exactly this!!! 😄 That’s what really makes a strong senior — digging through thousands of layers of code and still making sense of it all.
Perfect list 😄
my addition:
You’ve spent hours debugging only to realize the issue lives in a system you don’t even own
…and now you need three teams, two vendors, and a weekly sync to fix it.
No way, another person who is basically me!!! 😄😄
Oh yesss, I know this type of bug way too well 😂
When you can't solve a problem and the solution comes to you the next day while taking a shower... 😆
Hahaha yes 😄
Sometimes the solution literally comes to me… in a dream 😂
That is so awesome
Deleted prod DB thinking ssh was on dev environ
DR plan chaos-tested by accident xD
Hahaha my friend did exactly the same 😂
And then walked up to the DevOps guy like… “we do have a backup, right?” 😄
Not a real software engineer until your 20s break your neck
Hahaha I know what you mean 😄 early career really builds character the hard way 😂
You start debugging your code base while taking a shower.
Oh yes 😄 or even better — when the solution just casually shows up in a dream like your brain has been debugging in the background all night 😂
You’re a Real Software Developer Only If…
"dont know, its working on my computer..."
Exactly 😄 maybe that’s literally why Docker was invented — to finally kill the legendary “it works on my machine” excuse once and for all 😂
Thank You! What a great insight to what Software Dev life is really like 😃
Haha, right? 😄 And reading the comments just makes it even clearer how true it all is 😂
It really is, I just finished my first Mobile Web App Dev today. Feel so proud of myself but I know there's lots more to learn! If you find yourself burried in service subscription bills, you could give my Subscription Tracker a try! Any constructive criticism is welcome :) subtrack-web.com
I got almost 90% of what you mentioned, and even more 😅
Haha exactly 😄 I’ve got 100% of yours… and probably another 99% from the comments 😂
Check ^^
Ahh, all of these ring true at some point over the last 20+ years.
Of course 😄 the longer you’re in this field, the higher the chances you’ve hit every single one 😂
You missed one:
"Who is the moron who wrote this?"
...git blame...
"Oh it was me"
Hahaha, don’t even say it 😄 that one always hurts!
Ahahah, good one! I'm not a dev myself, but I've seen and heard a lot of these from my dev colleagues 😄 Thinking of writing this type of article from the Technical Writer perspective 🤔
Haha, you absolutely should! 😄 I’d love to read that, definitely looking forward to your article! 🚀
"Wait, This was working fine yesterday, and I have not touched it 🥹, WTH is breaking it?... Damn I have not started the server 😂😂😂"
Hahaha, same here — if I got a cent every time I said that, I’d probably have like two dollars already 😄
My personal favourite
Reading a shit code and bad mouthing the developer who did it and then git blaming the code only to find out that shit developer was myself.
Hahaha, totally! 😄 Been there more times than I’d like to admit — nothing humbles you faster than realizing the “terrible developer” was you all along 😂
Love it!
🥰
When testing a CRUD form after completing it. Instead of using normal names using names of professional wrestlers or Football players
I don’t really know much about wrestlers, but I love the idea 😄
This is painfully accurate 😂
“It works on my machine” and random bug fixes are basically rites of passage at this point.
Exactly 😄
And my tester friends? The moment they hear “it works on my machine”… they instantly start boiling 😂
Production broke due to an update to a tool or library that you're using.
You said: "But I didn't change anything!"
Oh yeah, been there 😄 now I always lock versions in package.json with ^ or even ~.
Although I remember a time when even a minor Angular update almost managed to break production 😂
You have said "What idiot wrote this" only to realize it was your code from years ago. I had that moment and my comments got a whole lot better afterwards.
Hahaha always! 😄 “Who wrote this ridiculous CSS?” …oh. Right. It was me 😂
It was interesting to read, thank you!
😊😍
As a CTO who's been shipping code (and breaking things) for 15+ years, I feel personally attacked by every single point on this list 😄
Hahaha, as you should 😄 I’m pretty sure for a CTO it’s all of those… x2 😂
great article and valid point as always!
Thanks a lot Ben!!! 😊
I have been a programmer for more than. 20 years and trust me my answer is Yes to all the above. :)
Haha, with that kind of experience it’s more than obvious 😄
I'm sure this piece of code will add value... valuable bugs. 😆
Thanks ChatGPT
"¡Uf, como principiante, siento que me falta mucho para ser 'de verdad'! Pero me motiva saber que hay un camino y que cada error es una lección. ¿Algún consejo para alguien que está empezando?"