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bpp | 3 years ago

Works until you get a bug in the deletion job. I've seen exactly this happen.

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hyperman1|3 years ago

You don't even need a bug. Just a wrong system clock.

We had a few windows laptops where something caused them to time travel to 8000 years in the future. Then, they'd slowly spend a few hours deleting every local profile, as nobody had logged in to them for 8000 years. Then, they'd do something to their time zone database and travel back 8000 years.

When they started the process, it was unstoppable. Trying to modify the system clock to something sane just caused them to depart to the future again, even if disconnected from the network. None of our users was very amused by this behavior, even if everything important was backed up.

tetsusaiga|3 years ago

that is almost cartoonishly nightmarish

jdbernard|3 years ago

Yeah, the idea is that by expecting the deletion logic you can make it simpler and more rigorously tested than regularly changing business logic or application code.

If you organizationally cannot prioritize quality then nothing can help you.