Jerry Ran Out of Numbers But Drank All the Punch

This is a submission for DEV's Summer Bug Smash: Smash Stories powered by Sentry.

Better yet, cue up Jerry's actual theme song—Jerry Was a Race Car Driver by Primus, because of course it is—and let the best bass player on the planet score the whole mess while you read.

And yes, it's the Summer Bug Smash and my entire cast is dressed for Christmas. Stay with me.

Meet Jerry 🪦

If you work with software any length of time, you already know the particular nightmares that come with legacy applications. This one is no different. It started life as a rewrite of some antiquated, bash-flavored system back when Java 8 was the coolest kid at the table. Let's call him Jerry.

Jerry Ran Out of Numbers But Drank All the Punch

Related reading

My Summer of Sleuthing: 373 Merged PRs and the Bugs That Taught Me Everything

The new customer who took down everyone: an ORM include that ate our CRM

Some Bugs Aren't in Your Code. They're Hidden in Your Dependencies.

The Door I Forgot to Lock, How One Missing Check Nearly Exposed Every Resume in…

Smash Story: The Demo Script That Out-Debugged My Test Suite

The Bug I Fixed Nine Times Before I Finally Killed It For Good