Shane Lazarus writes: > Heya > > My own experience agrees with you with regards to any system in production. > > However, it is also my experience that nothing demonstrates the > difference between what should happen and what actually occurs better > than running the code and seeing the aftermath. > > Thankfully, virtualisation makes things much simpler these days, and > running through everything on a clone prior to even considering steps > on the production system is consequently highly recommended.
Virtualisation is not a panacea. I have managed to achieve data loss through destructive actions taken within a "safe" virtualised sandbox. If the only thing that can demonstrate what a piece of code does is to run it blindly, rather than to work it out by reading and study, then the code is faulty and should be replaced. I expect the code I use to be in this state before I will even begin to trust its documentation because if the developer doesn't understand what it does how can his explanation be at all enlightening? Executing code in a test environment should only be to *verify* the assumptions and calculations you have *already made*. A development, test or other environment is as much "in production" as any other, because if they somehow become unavailable then someone, somewhere is losing money. And if you took it down because you didn't know what code you were executing was going to do then it's your fault. Matthew
