Are there programming tasks you consider so critical that you always do them thoughtfully and slowly?

Question

There are some tasks, especially the ones that involve deleting folders as SU, that I do thoughtfully and slowly before I press the Enter key. I think if others saw me do these at the careful pace that I do they would cringe. Are there critical programming tasks that you perform that you believe deserve this thoughtful and careful consideration?

Answer 1

Changes to live databases, actually I do a backup first just in case even know I'm extra careful :)

Answer 2

It's kind of a programming task, because if I do it wrong, it will affect my ability to get paid for programming: Write emails on touchy subjects or to touchy people.

It can take me an hour to get the tone of a one paragraph email just right.

Answer 3

Anything that irrecoverably changes important data. I've learned my lesson the hard way, several times.

Answer 4

A release process is usually a methodical thing for me.

Answer 5

Everything. I've never been a "just dive into it" programmer. Always have, always will be.

Answer 6

Submits - 'cause its embarrassing if I break a test.

Answer 7

Code to evaluate the accuracy of something I'm developing. Otherwise, I spend all this time making the other code production-ready, only to find it doesn't compute the right thing after all.

Answer 8

Common code. I.e. changes to old, shared code which is used in multiple independent programs.

Answer 9

Kernel driver stuff - cause those blue screens are a pain !

Answer 10

Any collection juggling, especially in C (all it takes is one off by one error to shotgun your heap).

Answer 11

On the DB side, if I run an update/insert/delete and I don't want to backup the whole database, I always select * into myTable_backup from myTable

Answer 12

if make big changes in Visual Studio eg a big refactoring or maybe re-organising solution\project structure I will do it on a copy of solution first to see if there are any gotcha and that the bloody thing will still compile and play nice. Once satisfied this is the case I will do it on code under source control.

I do this because I have experienced situations where the 'rollback' functionality of whatever source control you are using won't let you rollback as required and\or does not get it %100.

Answer 13

Doing get from SourceSafe — really easy to hit a wrong button and lose your local version that you've been working on. /I hate SS, but am forced to use it./