Trust No One (including yourself)

No matter how good people are, everyone makes mistakes when working on a software app. Software usually fails on assumptions like with Y2K. SO, if you have assumptions in the programs you write, you should have tests that verify that those assumptions are true. If you are installing on a different env. you should have tests to verify that the env. is good: that you can connect to your database, that any dependencies hold true. It's not because of distrust of others that you should write tests like that. It's always about identifying the problem and addressing it "yesterday". It's not a blame game, it's taking responsibility.

Now, as anyone can guess this is about me today (isn't it always?). I wish that I had built some tests better to identity all my assumptions. I have a lot, but today that wasn't enough. Lesson learned.