It Should Be Harder to Delete Things

Published On
- 1 min

How many databases will get deleted before we make a change?


There are countless examples of important data being deleted from production.

AWS Deletes ELB data

GitLab database deleting

Dropping Tables

Deleting 7 hours of data

Some argue that it's not the developer's fault when things get deleted unintentionally — it's on the managers or leadership for allowing that kind of situation to occur.

While that can be true, it's not always the case. Even with the strictest permissions, restricted access, and tight processes, mistakes can still happen.

Here's a simple solution: standardize the good ol' "text input" delete confirmation. It adds a layer of intentionality to the process.

I don't know how this would be implemented for things like running actions on a database, but that's not for me to figure out.

Something like this: