Many years ago, we had a sign for who broke the last build.
It was the earliest days of accountability, code reviews, and unit tests.
Did you break it? Fix it.
Did you break it? Your code must be running well.
It was the earliest form of accountability in software development.
As we progressed into the hype of the startup world, it also became a badge of honour that you were pushing the envelope, trying new things to make things work, not giving up, and going against the grain.
In all the cases of builds being broken, you always learned something – you learned what broke it and how to fix it.
If you haven’t broken the build in a while, maybe it’s time to start and see what will come from it.
