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Spent most of the day debugging issues with a new release. Logging tool was saying we were getting HTTP 400’s and 500’s from the backend. Couldn’t figure it out.

Eventually found the backend sometimes sends down successful responses but with statusCode 500 for no reason what so ever. Got so annoyed ... but said the 400’s must be us so can’t blame them for everything.

Turns out backend also sometimes does the opposite. Sends down errors with HTTP 200’s. A junior app Dev was apparently so annoyed that backend wouldn’t fix it, that he wrote code to parse the response, if it contained an error, re-wrote the statusCode to 400 and then passed the response up to the next layer. He never documented it before he left.

Saving the best part for last. Backend says their code is fine, it must be one of the other layers (load balancers, proxies etc) managed by one of the other teams in the company ... we didn’t contact any of these teams, no no no, that would require effort. No we’ve just blamed them privately and that’s that.

#successfulRelease

Comments
  • 13
    @rutee07 large corporations with insulated teams make it way too easy to blame someone else and therefore never bother to fix your own mess.
    Add the Peter principle to the mix and you're good to go 👍
  • 4
  • 4
    @rutee07 wafs, proxies,... They can rewrite wtv parts of the http packet they feel fit.
  • 7
    Sounds like my company exactly. I also often hear statements like:
    "It worked like this for years, you can't tell us to change it!" ... Well, it sucks.
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