"It Works on My Machine" and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves
A Survival Guide to Blame Your Team and the Universe
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Tech
"It Works on My Machine" and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves
A Survival Guide to Blame Your Team and the Universe
[Image: Apal Shah]
Apal Shah
20 Feb 2025
• 2 min read
[Image: "It Works on My Machine" and Other Lies We Tell Ourselves]
> "Congratulations! You’ve discovered a new dimension where physics doesn’t apply."
Let’s be real: your local environment isn’t a development setup—it’s a magical realm where dependencies resolve themselves, environment variables grow on trees, and all edge cases politely disappear. But the moment your code touches production? It’s like sending a pampered housecat into the jungle. Suddenly, your flawless logic is just… wildlife footage.
So of course it works locally! You’ve spent years curating this digital landfill into a fragile ecosystem of deprecated gems, half-installed Docker containers, and a node_modules folder that defies the laws of thermodynamics. Production, meanwhile, is a sterile prison where your code is forced to follow the best practices.
Disgusting.
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**The Art of Deflection**
When your code fails in production, remember: deny, deflect, disappear.
Master these phrases:
- “Must be a caching issue.” (Nobody understands caching. Nobody.)
- “Did you run npm install?” (The problem is always npm. Always.)
- “Works on my machine ¯_(ツ)_/¯” (The nuclear option. Deploy with pride.)
For advanced gaslighting, add:
- “This worked in the staging environment.” (Staging? Never heard of her.)
- “Must be a race condition.” (No one will ask follow-ups. They’re scared of races now.)
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**The ‘Works on My Machine’ Certification Program**
Become a certified “It Works on My Machine” developer in 3 easy steps:
- Ignore all warnings. Compilers are just fearmongering.
- Never test on a clean environment. If it runs once, it’s fine.
- Blame the user. “Are you sure you clicked the button right?”
Graduation Exam: Deploy a “Hello World” app. When it crashes, insist the server is “oppressing your creativity.”
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**The Five Stages of Production Grief**
- Denial: “But it WORKS LOCALLY!”
- Anger: “WHO TOUCHED MY CODE?!”
- Bargaining: “What if we just… reboot the universe?”
- Depression: Cries in sudo rm -rf /.*
- Acceptance: “Fine. I’ll add another try-catch.”
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**Conclusion**
At the end of the day, “It works on my machine” isn’t a failure—it’s a philosophy. A testament to humanity’s hubris in the face of entropy. So next time your code explodes in production, remember:
“You didn’t write a bug. You wrote a ✨feature✨ that only works in a parallel dimension.”
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**Call to Inaction:**
Why fix your code when you can just buy a “Works on My Machine” hoodie and lean into the meme? Share this blog with a colleague who’s currently sobbing into their IDE. Together, we can normalize delusion.
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[Original source](https://gosink.in/it-works-on-my-machine-and-other-lies-we-tell-ourselves/)