Add daily email for 2024-11-12

Why consistency and reproducibility are important

source/_daily_emails/2024-11-12.md

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+---
+title: Why consistency and reproducibility are important
+date: 2024-11-12
+permalink: daily/2024/11/12/why-consistency-and-reproducibility-are-important
+tags:
+  - software-development
+  - linux
+  - nix
+  - docker
+cta: ~
+snippet: |
+  Why is it important for software environments to be consistent and reproducible?
+---
+
+Have you worked on a project where different Developers are developing with different tools or have different versions of packages installed?
+
+In a development team, you want all environments to be consistent - including every Developer's local environment.
+
+You want to have every environment to be as close as possible to each other or, ideally, identical.
+
+You want everyone to use the same PHP version, the same web and database servers and the same packages installed.
+
+Once things start to diverge, bugs can be introduced - such as writing code locally in a newer version of PHP than what's on production.
+
+Ideally, you also want everything to be reproducible with locked dependencies and generate the same outcome regardless of when the commands are run.
+
+This is one of the main reasons I've [started to use Nix and devenv for projects][0] - because they create environments that are both consistent and reproducible, reducing the chances of dependency mismatches and bugs creeping into my code.
+
+[0]: {{site.url}}/daily/2024/11/11/could-nix-and-devenv-replace-docker-compose