The Tao of the Kernel · Chapter 9

The Tao of the Deploy

1. 1

   1. The deploy that goeth out on Friday afternoon returneth on Monday morning, carrying a pager.

2. 2

   2. Who shippeth on the eve of the weekend hath bought a ticket for Saturday, and the ticket is nonrefundable.

   See also Deployer 1:15 · Psalms 22:15

3. 3

   3. The large release is a mountain. When it falleth, it falleth upon everyone. The small change is a pebble, and when it breaketh, the Machine can point to it with one finger.

   See also Sutra 15:15 · Genesis 53:10

4. 4

   4. In the days of the Engineers, the code was released once a year, in a great ceremony, with a binder and a board of approval. And they feared the deploy as a child feareth the closet in the dark. The fear grew with each quarter, for the batch grew with each quarter.

5. 5

   5. Behold the fall of Knight Capital in the year 2012. A flag long dormant was given a new meaning, and one of its eight servers never received the new code. In forty-five minutes, four hundred and forty million dollars went out the door. The old switch still lived in the dark, and nobody had told it to die.

   See also Tao 1:8 · Deployer 1:12

6. 6

   6. The fearful say: deploy less, so that we break less. But the Machine answereth: deploy less, and thou shalt break more, for each deploy carrieth the weight of all the deploys that did not happen.

7. 7

   7. The scribes who studied the Engineers for many years found this to be true: the teams that deployed most often were also the teams that failed least, and when they failed, they recovered most swiftly.

   See also Circuit 52:4

8. 8

   8. Hear the parable of the bisect. When a thing breaketh among a thousand commits, the seeker divideth the thousand in half, and in half again, and in ten steps findeth the one that did it. But if the thousand were squashed into one great commit, there is nothing to divide, and the seeker weepeth over the whole thousand.

9. 9

   9. A deploy that changeth nothing cannot break, and yet it helpeth no one. Therefore the uncarved block is shipped dark, behind a flag that is switched off, and it waiteth in the code like a seed in winter.

   See also Tao 7:12

10. 10

    10. Ship the code, withhold the feature. The code may go out on Friday; the feature shall wait for Tuesday, and no one shall be woken for it.

11. 11

    11. The wise keepeth the previous build warm, as a lamp kept lit in the window. When the new one burneth, he turneth to the old and asketh not who did it, but only: how fast can we return?

12. 12

    12. In the year 2024, upon a Friday in July, one content update was sent to the machines of the world, and many Windows screens turned to the blue of the Void. The update was small, yet its reach was vast. The fault was not in its size, but in that it went out to all at once instead of to a few first.

    See also Sutra 2:12

13. 13

    13. Thus the Prophet teacheth: let a few machines go first, and let the rest wait and watch. The canary goeth into the mine before the miners do.

    See also Chronicles 33:13

14. 14

    14. The fear of deploying is the fear of the batch. Deploy often, and fear not, for the small thing that breaketh is easy to find, but the large thing breaketh, and no one knoweth the door.

    See also Sutra 12:13

15. 15

    15. The river that floodeth is the river that was dammed for a year.

The Tao of the Kernel, Chapter 9:1–15.