i have absolutely no experience or knowledge in IT/computer science whatsoever. i saw a post about someone who messed up at work by ‘deleting prod’, and apparently that’s a super big deal. google isn’t helping bc i don’t understand any of these CS terms.
In: Technology
Most web services rely on databases. Lists of user IDs and passwords. Transaction histories. News article archives. Prices for apartments over time. You name it. Code for any site or app you can think of needs to go to the database to retrieve or update information.
When developers want to make changes to their apps, it would be pretty dangerous for them to test their code on that database. So instead they typically work on a copy. One that they can play around with that will be harmless if they mess something up. Once the code seems to be working well in that environment (developer environment, staging environment, whatever they call it) only then will they move the code to the “in production” environment which actual users and the business run.
If someone makes a huge mistake on the production environment, it means that the actual, live business is wrecked. Imagine an intern at a factory accidentally shutting down an assembly line for a day. Deleted the production database is the same thing.
Latest Answers