Are there programming tasks you consider so critical that you always do them thoughtfully and slowly?

Question

There are some tasks, especially the ones that involve deleting folders as SU, that I do thoughtfully and slowly before I press the Enter key. I think if others saw me do these at the careful pace that I do they would cringe. Are there critical programming tasks that you perform that you believe deserve this thoughtful and careful consideration?

Answer 1

Changes to live databases, actually I do a backup first just in case even know I'm extra careful :)

Answer 2

A release process is usually a methodical thing for me.

Answer 3

It's kind of a programming task, because if I do it wrong, it will affect my ability to get paid for programming: Write emails on touchy subjects or to touchy people.

It can take me an hour to get the tone of a one paragraph email just right.

Answer 4

Common code. I.e. changes to old, shared code which is used in multiple independent programs.

Answer 5

Everything. I've never been a "just dive into it" programmer. Always have, always will be.

Answer 6

Doing get from SourceSafe — really easy to hit a wrong button and loose your local version that you've been working on. /I hate SS, but forced to use it./

Answer 7

Kernel driver stuff - cause those blue screens are a pain !

Answer 8

Submits - 'cause its embarrassing if I break a test.

Answer 9

Code to evaluate the accuracy of something I'm developing. Otherwise, I spend all this time making the other code production-ready, only to find it doesn't compute the right thing after all.

Answer 10

Any collection juggling, especially in C (all it takes is one off by one error to shotgun your heap).

Answer 11

On the DB side, if I run an update/insert/delete and I don't want to backup the whole database, I always select * into myTable_backup from myTable

Answer 12

Anything that irrecoverably changes important data. I've learned my lesson the hard way, several times.