Day One

We've been handed this old legacy system called "Democracy". It's an emergency. The old maintainers are saying it has been misbehaving lately but they have no idea how to fix it. We've had a meeting with them to find out as much as possible about the system, but it turns out that all the original team members left the company long time ago. The current team doesn't have much understanding of the system beyond some basic operational knowledge.

We've conducted a cursory code review, focusing not so much on business logic but rather on the stuff that could possibly help us to tame it: Monitoring, reliability characteristics, feedback loops, automation already in place. Our first impression: Oh, God, is this thing complex! Second impression: The system is vaguely modular. Each module is strongly coupled with every other module though. It's an organically grown legacy system at its [...]

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Outline:

(00:04) Day One

(01:18) Day Two

(01:48) Day Three

(02:34) Day Four

(03:21) Day Five

(04:41) Day Six

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First published:
August 3rd, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gxzfaLHkDy3hry6oz/sre-s-review-of-democracy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“SRE’s review of Democracy” by Martin Sustrik

LessWrong (30+ Karma)