Don't forget to build before manually testing

This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the dumb-mistakes-and-gotchas category.

Last Updated: 2024-03-28

I shipped broken code for a refactor of a translations feature to staging. What was suprising from my perspective was that I had tested it manually in the browser and it seemed to work just fine.

The issue: I was not using my refactored code in this test because I forgot to build by running webpack first. Everything was working only because I used out-of-date code.

Lesson

Whenever there is a build step involved, check that this has been executed before doing any manual tests. Better yet use software testing to catch these things.