Buggy Code on Production, Survived

In the life cycle of a project, you come across different situations. Some you overcome, some you don’t both mentally and technically. Luckily, we survived one such life cycle with buggy code. However, survival doesn’t always mean success, and we may not be so lucky the next time.

Every developer who has pushed broken code into production knows that strange mix of panic and pride. Panic because you don’t know what’s going to break next, and pride because, somehow, it still works or at least, doesn’t crash immediately.

That experience taught me lessons far more valuable than any clean sprint or perfect release could. In this post, I want to share what we did right, what we did wrong, and what we learned the hard way. I’ll keep it simple and focus on the bigger picture — the choices that helped us survive, and the ones that nearly buried us.

What We Have Done Right

We used Scrum as our agile methodology. Accordingly, we had daily meetings and discussion sessions. In these sessions, we tried to overcome difficult problems and brainstorm ideas. The outcome of those sessions was almost always testing. As a result, we wrote many tests — primarily black-box tests — to verify that the overall system was working correctly. These were some of the good things we did.

Having regular communication and visible progress made a difference. Even though our process wasn’t perfect, those small habits kept the team aligned and the project moving. We learned to talk through challenges instead of ignoring them.

Testing, in particular, was our strongest line of defense. While we didn’t have full coverage or perfect structure, the tests we wrote helped us catch serious issues early. They became our safety net. Obviously, not elegant, but effective. Looking back, these small steps probably saved the project from complete collapse.

What We Have Done Wrong

We did not end the Scrum sessions on time. They always became longer than five minutes and often turned into design discussions. Moreover, the design sessions we had were not that effective since the whole team did not participate. What was worse, some team members didn’t want to listen. They avoided feedback and focused only on their own solutions.

That was our first major mistake. Mistaking noise for collaboration. Meetings stretched endlessly, but our progress didn’t really go anywhere sometimes. Our ideas clashed without direction, and the louder voices often won over the wiser ones. Instead of designing together, we were arguing separately. And that doesn’t help anyone.

We should have respected each other’s perspectives, especially when opinions differed. Every developer, regardless of experience, can improve the application somehow. If you don’t believe someone can contribute, that person shouldn’t be on your team.

Another serious mistake was overconfidence. We trusted our instincts more than our process and ignored testing when it mattered most. We believed we could move faster without tests, but what we gained in speed, we lost tenfold in stability. When the bugs started piling up, we realized too late that the code had become a tangled mess. Each fix introduced new problems, and our frustration grew. We worked day and night, tired and angry, writing even more buggy code. The longer it went on, the more we lost perspective until we became what I like to call code monsters.

The worst part of what we have done is testing. We did not write many unit tests and we believed in ourselves so much that we thought we do not need tests. What was the outcome? It was simply disaster, we could not figure out where the bug is. Code become more complex than ever. At the end, we went mad and tried to find solutions day and night. We all got very tired and we did write more buggy code. The more time passed, the more furious we become. At the end, we became code monsters.

A Reflection

Regardless of the bad situation, we somehow managed to survive. I say “luckily” because we found the critical bugs just in time; next time, we might not be that fortunate.

Our managers also handled the crisis well. Even though we missed the deadline by a week, they prioritized stability over appearances and gave us space to fix what mattered most. That decision probably saved the release.

Nevertheless, the damage was real. We were left with a pile of spaghetti code. Unstructured, untestable, and painful to maintain. Each new change felt like walking through a minefield. Still, that chaos taught me more than any clean project ever could.

What I learned from that coding hell was invaluable:

• The importance of being organized, no matter how small the task.
• The power of writing testable, maintainable code.
• The need to design deliberately, not impulsively.
• And above all, the value of respect for your teammates, your process, and your own limits.

Survival is not success, but it’s a beginning. We didn’t come out proud, but I think we came out wiser.