Writing Guidelines

DevSolved is a repository of technical truth. To ensure that our platform remains the highest-signal resource for software engineers, we require all published war stories to adhere to these guidelines.

1. Redact Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

Never publish actual user data, plaintext API keys, proprietary source code (beyond what is strictly necessary to demonstrate the bug), or internal server IPs. Obfuscate sensitive variables before posting.

2. Blameless Postmortems

We do not accept submissions that attack, blame, or shame individual developers. If a junior engineer dropped a production database, the postmortem must focus on the missing guardrails in the infrastructure, not the engineer's mistake.

3. Provide Reproducible Context

A good war story includes the exact error signature, the environment constraints, and the symptoms. A great war story includes the exact steps to reproduce the issue.

• Include Stack Traces: Provide the exact stack trace snippet.
• Specify Versions: Note the versions of the libraries, frameworks, and databases involved.

4. Focus on the Root Cause

Do not just state the fix (e.g., "I restarted the server"). Explain why the server needed to be restarted (e.g., "A memory leak in the websocket connection handler exhausted the heap").