This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tony St Pierre
You update a package.
One test fails. Another throws silence.
CI lights up like it found a ghost.
Then you notice a config no one touched in years is now breaking everything.
And buried in the stack trace is an old dependency you forgot was even
there.
The first instinct? Blame the update.
But that’s not where the problem started.
The change just hit a part of the system you’d stopped paying attention to.
In Day 191 of Daily Dev Reflections, I explore what version bumps reveal: not just bugs, but the assumptions and workarounds we’ve been carrying with us.
This isn’t about a broken build.
It’s about noticing what you’ve outgrown.
“Software matures when you delete with intention. So do you.”
If you’ve ever pinned a version just to avoid a deeper conversation, this one’s for you.
Key Insight
A system that never changes becomes a statue.
No one uses statues. They just walk past them.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tony St Pierre