.tips

page 4 of 11, 261 small things in all. back to the first.

.july

2026, 25 tips.

A contract test catches the API change before the deploy
Jul 30
testingdistributed-systems
One wide event per request instead of ten log lines
Jul 29
observability
A builder per entity, with sensible defaults
Jul 28
testing
A canary that checks the output, not the status code
Jul 26
reliabilityobservability
Seed the random generator and print the seed on failure
Jul 26
testing
A flaky test goes to quarantine the day it flakes
Jul 24
testingengineering-practice
Give every LLM feature a token budget
Jul 23
llmreliability
Property tests find the input you would not have thought of
Jul 22
testing
The kill switch is not the rollout flag
Jul 20
reliabilityfeature-flags
Snapshots for output you would diff by eye, nothing else
Jul 20
testing
Mock HTTP at the network, not the function that calls it
Jul 18
testing
Pin GitHub Actions by commit digest, not tag
Jul 17
securityci
Tests that touch time use a fake clock
Jul 16
testing
Publish with OIDC and delete the npm token
Jul 14
securitynpmci
A test name is the sentence that is true when it passes
Jul 14
testing
An error budget turns 'is it reliable enough' into a number
Jul 12
observabilitysre
Do not install a package published this week
Jul 11
securitynpm
If the fix is 'wait', it should not page
Jul 10
observabilitysre
One dashboard per service, four panels at the top
Jul 8
observabilitysre
Turn off install scripts and allow the few that need them
Jul 8
securitynpm
Sample the boring logs, keep every failure
Jul 6
observabilitycost
pytest -x --lf when you are fixing a failure
Jul 5
pythontesting
Pick field names once and use them everywhere
Jul 4
observability
Four log levels, with a rule for each
Jul 2
observability
uv replaces pip, venv and pip-tools in one binary
Jul 2
pythontooling

.tips

.july

A contract test catches the API change before the deploy

One wide event per request instead of ten log lines

A builder per entity, with sensible defaults

A canary that checks the output, not the status code

Seed the random generator and print the seed on failure

A flaky test goes to quarantine the day it flakes

Give every LLM feature a token budget

Property tests find the input you would not have thought of

The kill switch is not the rollout flag

Snapshots for output you would diff by eye, nothing else

Mock HTTP at the network, not the function that calls it

Pin GitHub Actions by commit digest, not tag

Tests that touch time use a fake clock

Publish with OIDC and delete the npm token

A test name is the sentence that is true when it passes

An error budget turns 'is it reliable enough' into a number

Do not install a package published this week

If the fix is 'wait', it should not page

One dashboard per service, four panels at the top

Turn off install scripts and allow the few that need them

Sample the boring logs, keep every failure

pytest -x --lf when you are fixing a failure

Pick field names once and use them everywhere

Four log levels, with a rule for each

uv replaces pip, venv and pip-tools in one binary