A developer's automated checks failed to spot a critical problem—his newsletter account was disabled—because the checks only reported 'zero subscribers'. This highlights the importance of asking the right questions with our monitoring tools.
Do you rely on automated checks to ensure your systems are running smoothly? These checks might be misleading you if they aren't asking the right questions. That's a painful lesson one developer learned recently.
The developer was running a newsletter service, and without any direct notification, his account was disabled on October 19th, and then again on October 24th. He didn't discover this through any of his usual checks. Instead, he stumbled upon it by chance when he opened his dashboard for another reason and saw a banner stating his account was 'not approved'.
What did this mean in practice? It meant all the subscribe forms on 26 of his blog posts were posting into thin air. Readers trying to subscribe encountered a 404 error, as the subscribe page, archive, and even the API embed link were all returning 'not found'.
Ironically, the developer had an automated check running regularly—29 times between October 18th and November 10th. This tool would call the newsletter service's API and ask, 'How many subscribers do I have?'. Each time, the answer was 'zero'. The developer had designed this check to be quiet if the count was zero, assuming it simply meant 'nobody signed up'. The check wasn't stupid, but it never asked if the thing it was counting could even be reached.
The defect wasn't in the code that performed the check, but in the question the check was asking. The check accurately answered, 'How many subscribers does the API say I have?' but completely failed to answer the more crucial question: 'How many readers can actually subscribe?'.
What does this mean for you? Always remember that automated checks are powerful, but they need to be programmed to ask the *right* questions. Don't just rely on superficial numbers; ensure your tools are testing the core functionality users expect. A zero count can sometimes mean something is completely broken, not just that no one has signed up yet. It's a valuable lesson for anyone depending on automated systems.
The developer was running a newsletter service, and without any direct notification, his account was disabled on October 19th, and then again on October 24th. He didn't discover this through any of his usual checks. Instead, he stumbled upon it by chance when he opened his dashboard for another reason and saw a banner stating his account was 'not approved'.
What did this mean in practice? It meant all the subscribe forms on 26 of his blog posts were posting into thin air. Readers trying to subscribe encountered a 404 error, as the subscribe page, archive, and even the API embed link were all returning 'not found'.
Ironically, the developer had an automated check running regularly—29 times between October 18th and November 10th. This tool would call the newsletter service's API and ask, 'How many subscribers do I have?'. Each time, the answer was 'zero'. The developer had designed this check to be quiet if the count was zero, assuming it simply meant 'nobody signed up'. The check wasn't stupid, but it never asked if the thing it was counting could even be reached.
The defect wasn't in the code that performed the check, but in the question the check was asking. The check accurately answered, 'How many subscribers does the API say I have?' but completely failed to answer the more crucial question: 'How many readers can actually subscribe?'.
What does this mean for you? Always remember that automated checks are powerful, but they need to be programmed to ask the *right* questions. Don't just rely on superficial numbers; ensure your tools are testing the core functionality users expect. A zero count can sometimes mean something is completely broken, not just that no one has signed up yet. It's a valuable lesson for anyone depending on automated systems.
