Developers feared large chaps carrying baseball bats could come to kneecap their ... test account?
The Register, Monday, January 20th, 2025
A whole different kind of 'technical debt' turned into real-world trouble
Accidents will happen, and every Monday The Register celebrates them - and your escape from the consequences - in a fresh instalment of Who, Me? It's the reader-contributed column that details the downside of working in tech.
This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as "Rufus," who once worked for a midsized UK retail chain that offered credit accounts to its customers.
To test the website that customers used to manage those accounts, and the backend apps, the retailer created test accounts that Rufus and his colleagues could use to run dummy transactions.
Those accounts had names like "Mr Test Account Six" and their address was always listed as the retailer's HQ where Rufus worked. Transactions made using the test accounts weren't ever processed as real orders. But each of the accounts did have a real credit limit.