What do you call production when you don't produce anything?



  • Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION".
    (Begin side rant on all caps and binary collation now.)
    ... [Truncated for sanity]


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our
    doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION".
    You're clearly not in the UK, where people in your position have been doing the same thing for 13 years, however they are, for some reason, proud of it. The current incumbents appear to be doing nothing to change the status-quo of course.


  • Garbage Person

     Your software environment is producing its as-designed outputs. Whether those outputs are actually being used to produce anything of note is irrelevant to naming the environment "PRODUCTION"



  • I agree that it is producing outputs, but I contend that outputs are not products, they're simply a part of the service that the environment provides.

    The typical test environment doesn't test outputs, it enables testing of changes. Production environments provide services that assist and enable production of goods.

    I suppose you could argue that in my case we are supporting the production of a service, but I still feel that the word production standing alone implies there are products.



  • I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 

    PRODUCTION: Processes and methods employed in transformation of tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, or subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, know how) into goods or services.



     

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Medezark said:

    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 
    Well if you're just going to pick up a narrow definition...



    Google
    the act or process of producing something; "Shakespeare's production of poetry was enormous"; "the production of white blood cells"



  • @PJH said:

    @Medezark said:
    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 
    Well if you're just going to pick up a narrow definition...

    Google
    the act or process of producing something; "Shakespeare's production of poetry was enormous"; "the production of white blood cells"

    I thoughtlessly only posted part of the definition -- thereby making the same error as the OP.  Damn you and your 1,500 + post count.

    I'll get you next time Gadget! er.. PJH.



  • @Medezark said:

    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 

    PRODUCTION: Processes and methods employed in transformation of tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, or subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, know how) into goods or services.



     

    I don't mean to be confrontational, but I call your definition bogus and/or jargon. I looked for a definition that defined production as something that results in a service and found nothing to support that from Google's results (Princeton and Wiktionary), Merriam-Webster, or dictionary.com (which I don't entirely trust, but occasionally use anyways).



    Your definition, and yes I see your sources, sounds like the definitions in my business textbooks that defined the word as the author wanted to use it, not as the real world did.



  • @StarkRavingSage said:

    @Medezark said:

    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 

    PRODUCTION: Processes and methods employed in transformation of tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, or subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, know how) into goods or services.



     

    I don't mean to be confrontational, but I call your definition bogus and/or jargon. I looked for a definition that defined production as something that results in a service and found nothing to support that from Google's results (Princeton and Wiktionary), Merriam-Webster, or dictionary.com (which I don't entirely trust, but occasionally use anyways).



    Your definition, and yes I see your sources, sounds like the definitions in my business textbooks that defined the word as the author wanted to use it, not as the real world did.

    You have to go back to the root verb PRODUCE, and then by extension realise that PRODUCTION is a NOUN meaning THE ACT OF PRODUCING. Now, go back to, for example Mirriam Webster and properly extend practically any definition of the verb PRODUCE, dumbass.



  • @Medezark said:

    You have to go back to the root verb PRODUCE, and then by extension realise that PRODUCTION is a NOUN meaning THE ACT OF PRODUCING. Now, go back to, for example Mirriam Webster and properly extend practically any definition of the verb PRODUCE, dumbass.
     

    Please, keep going back the rest of the way.  The English word "produce" comes from the Latin "producere", meaning "to pull out".  That's why a magician is said to "produce" a rabbit from a hat.  It's why Quincy Jones had the job title he had, pulling a hit record out of an artist.  It's why La Migra asks you if you can "produce" proof of your citizenship.  It's why, when a customs officer saw Alfred Hitchcock's profession listed as "producer" and (not recognizing him) asked what it was he produced, Hitch was able to respond "gooseflesh".

    So there's no solecism in having a program or system that pulls reports out of whatever orifice it has to reach into and calling that program or system "production".



  • @Medezark said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:
    @Medezark said:

    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 

    PRODUCTION: Processes and methods employed in transformation of tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, or subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, know how) into goods or services.

    I don't mean to be confrontational, but I call your definition bogus and/or jargon. I looked for a definition that defined production as something that results in a service and found nothing to support that from Google's results (Princeton and Wiktionary), Merriam-Webster, or dictionary.com (which I don't entirely trust, but occasionally use anyways).

    Your definition, and yes I see your sources, sounds like the definitions in my business textbooks that defined the word as the author wanted to use it, not as the real world did.
    You have to go back to the root verb PRODUCE, and then by extension realise that PRODUCTION is a NOUN meaning THE ACT OF PRODUCING. Now, go back to, for example Mirriam Webster and properly extend practically any definition of the verb PRODUCE, dumbass.
    First, sir, there's no cause to curse or name call.

    Second, only one of the definitions is "the act or process or producing."

    Furthermore, the verb produce doesn't "properly extend" to anything that you could apply as an act or process that teachers do for students.

    Third, the noun production is what we're talking about, it has its own definitions and its own connotations independant, related, but independant of its root.

    Finally, I never asked for the definition of production, I asked "What do you call production when you don't produce anything?"

    The end of that implies a premise that the generic you does not produce anything.

    Please, Medezark, contribute or don't. Don't clog this thread up with garbage beside the point and name calling.



  • @da Doctah said:

    @Medezark said:

    You have to go back to the root verb PRODUCE, and then by extension realise that PRODUCTION is a NOUN meaning THE ACT OF PRODUCING. Now, go back to, for example Mirriam Webster and properly extend practically any definition of the verb PRODUCE, dumbass.
     

    Please, keep going back the rest of the way.  The English word "produce" comes from the Latin "producere", meaning "to pull out".  That's why a magician is said to "produce" a rabbit from a hat.  It's why Quincy Jones had the job title he had, pulling a hit record out of an artist.  It's why La Migra asks you if you can "produce" proof of your citizenship.  It's why, when a customs officer saw Alfred Hitchcock's profession listed as "producer" and (not recognizing him) asked what it was he produced, Hitch was able to respond "gooseflesh".

    So there's no solecism in having a program or system that pulls reports out of whatever orifice it has to reach into and calling that program or system "production".

     That's something I can agree with. I considered the latin root, but looked at pro and ducere separately.

     Thanks!



  • @StarkRavingSage said:

    "What do you call production when you don't produce anything?"
    In this case, just add an 'e' and an 'a'. Pro-education. Sorted.



  • @StarkRavingSage said:

    Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION". (Begin side rant on all caps and binary collation now.) ... [Truncated for sanity]

    Most companies don't produce anything.  My impression of the term production environment is that it is the subset of systems that should be treated like a production line.  Just like a production line, if these systems are down, somebody is being paid for sitting on their hands or the process falls back to a less efficient manual one.  BTW, at the job with a shop floor, would an outage in the production IT environment have caused actual production to stop?  I would think you'd be more likely to lose the ability to do customer service than the ability to create widgets.


  • @StarkRavingSage said:

    @Medezark said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:
    @Medezark said:

    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 

    PRODUCTION: Processes and methods employed in transformation of tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, or subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, know how) into goods or services.

    I don't mean to be confrontational, but I call your definition bogus and/or jargon. I looked for a definition that defined production as something that results in a service and found nothing to support that from Google's results (Princeton and Wiktionary), Merriam-Webster, or dictionary.com (which I don't entirely trust, but occasionally use anyways).

    Your definition, and yes I see your sources, sounds like the definitions in my business textbooks that defined the word as the author wanted to use it, not as the real world did.
    You have to go back to the root verb PRODUCE, and then by extension realise that PRODUCTION is a NOUN meaning THE ACT OF PRODUCING. Now, go back to, for example Mirriam Webster and properly extend practically any definition of the verb PRODUCE, dumbass.
    First, sir, there's no cause to curse or name call.

    Second, only one of the definitions is "the act or process or producing."

    Furthermore, the verb produce doesn't "properly extend" to anything that you could apply as an act or process that teachers do for students.

    Third, the noun production is what we're talking about, it has its own definitions and its own connotations independant, related, but independant of its root.

    Finally, I never asked for the definition of production, I asked "What do you call production when you don't produce anything?"

    The end of that implies a premise that the generic you does not produce anything.

    Please, Medezark, contribute or don't. Don't clog this thread up with garbage beside the point and name calling.

    Your school does not "produce graduates"?

    Maybe if you described exactly what the production environment you are refering to is, then we could frame an intelligent response.

    I apologize if I hurt your feelings, but the term "Production" in relation to a server environment (For example DEVELOPMENT, UAT, PRODUCTION) is a quite common vernacular term in use.
    I very rarely devolve to the level of name-calling, at least not as often as some of the older forum posters. And as these forums and this site are more often than not directly concerned with such the assumption is that you ran into a set of these environments.

    Either you are new to the world of development. or you're stuck on your semantic interpretation and it seems that you took little time or effort or thought beyond "this doesn't match my definition of production, and thus is wrong".



  • @Medezark said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    @Medezark said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:
    @Medezark said:

    I call your definition of PRODUCTION flawed: 

    PRODUCTION: Processes and methods employed in transformation of tangible inputs (raw materials, semi-finished goods, or subassemblies) and intangible inputs (ideas, information, know how) into goods or services.

    I don't mean to be confrontational, but I call your definition bogus and/or jargon. I looked for a definition that defined production as something that results in a service and found nothing to support that from Google's results (Princeton and Wiktionary), Merriam-Webster, or dictionary.com (which I don't entirely trust, but occasionally use anyways).

    Your definition, and yes I see your sources, sounds like the definitions in my business textbooks that defined the word as the author wanted to use it, not as the real world did.
    You have to go back to the root verb PRODUCE, and then by extension realise that PRODUCTION is a NOUN meaning THE ACT OF PRODUCING. Now, go back to, for example Mirriam Webster and properly extend practically any definition of the verb PRODUCE, dumbass.
    First, sir, there's no cause to curse or name call.

    Second, only one of the definitions is "the act or process or producing."

    Furthermore, the verb produce doesn't "properly extend" to anything that you could apply as an act or process that teachers do for students.

    Third, the noun production is what we're talking about, it has its own definitions and its own connotations independant, related, but independant of its root.

    Finally, I never asked for the definition of production, I asked "What do you call production when you don't produce anything?"

    The end of that implies a premise that the generic you does not produce anything.

    Please, Medezark, contribute or don't. Don't clog this thread up with garbage beside the point and name calling.

    Your school does not "produce graduates"?

    Maybe if you described exactly what the production environment you are refering to is, then we could frame an intelligent response.

    I apologize if I hurt your feelings, but the term "Production" in relation to a server environment (For example DEVELOPMENT, UAT, PRODUCTION) is a quite common vernacular term in use.
    I very rarely devolve to the level of name-calling, at least not as often as some of the older forum posters. And as these forums and this site are more often than not directly concerned with such the assumption is that you ran into a set of these environments.

    Either you are new to the world of development. or you're stuck on your semantic interpretation and it seems that you took little time or effort or thought beyond "this doesn't match my definition of production, and thus is wrong".

    No, my school does not give birth to or compose graduates, my school teaches and matriculates them. My school produces graduates in that it displays them at the graduation ceremony, but the system's participation in that is simply to produce a list of graduates, not the graduates themselves.

    The description you request: Our system is an academic institution focused ERP system. Production fills the role you might expect, it handles the interface that our students and teachers access and also that our administration and support staff use to manipulate the institution's information most connected to reality. (On a side note, I shouldn't be complaining about the naming of production as each of our environments development, training, and test are used for all of those functions.)

    Now, though I like the responses/ideas from davedavenotdavemaybedave and Jaime, I think better terms for the environment we call Production would be Business or Operations.

    My feelings were not hurt, for that you would need my respect.

    As to the rest of your pointlessly condescending response almost entirely based on false assumptions, I'm not interested in addressing it further.

    Once again I ask you to contribute or cease posting here. I likely won't respond to you again, sir.



  • I'm sorry, but what's this discussion about?

    It's called production. End.

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    (On a side note, I shouldn't be complaining about the naming of production as each of our environments development, training, and test are used for all of those functions.)

    There's your WTF.

     



  • @Jaime said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION". (Begin side rant on all caps and binary collation now.) ... [Truncated for sanity]

    Most companies don't produce anything.  My impression of the term production environment is that it is the subset of systems that should be treated like a production line.  Just like a production line, if these systems are down, somebody is being paid for sitting on their hands or the process falls back to a less efficient manual one.  BTW, at the job with a shop floor, would an outage in the production IT environment have caused actual production to stop?  I would think you'd be more likely to lose the ability to do customer service than the ability to create widgets.

    You know, thinking of it that way the system here is arguably closer to your production line analogy than the place with production lines. Over there networking and hardware failures in some areas could cause a production stop, but the "production" environments (two distinct systems with different purposes) would only cause support personnel, engineers, and distribution/sales headaches. It would mean people are getting paid to sit on their hands, but not any of the shop floor personnel, barring a >24 hour long outage which could mean materials weren't ordered or products are taking space when they should have been shipped and could compound other production slowdowns or stops.



  • Look through the credits on a music CD.  There is always a credit for "Producer" (usually just before "Recording Engineer").

     I know what the musicians do, and I know what the recording engineer does, but what does the "Producer" do?  All I know is he does more than the "Executive Producer".

     

     



  • @newfweiler said:

    Look through the credits on a music CD.  There is always a credit for "Producer" (usually just before "Recording Engineer").

     I know what the musicians do, and I know what the recording engineer does, but what does the "Producer" do?  All I know is he does more than the "Executive Producer".

     

     

    The "Executive Producer" is in charge of executing anyone who screws up.


  • That's why I was saying earlier that production isn't just the act of producing. It is its own. It has separate meanings that only began with the root.



    Producing a show (theatre producers) was to present it to the public. The people called producers weren't the guys at the mic narrating or announcing, they were the ones who made the choices about the production. They didn't write the scirpt or direct, but they got to choose the script and director. They also gave orders, likely made changes to the script.



    Producers are the behind the scenes people that get money from investors, and manage the show. Executive producers are just producers with more say than the others, usually they put a lot of their own money in, or brought a lot of the invested money with their name or their pitch.



  • @newfweiler said:

     I know what the musicians do, and I know what the recording engineer does, but what does the "Producer" do?
    In some genres - notably rap and reggae - the producer writes the tune or creates the beat/rhythm, and the singer does the words. In others, he does a job not much different from a recording engineer in practice. The difference is like that between an architect and someone who draws up blueprints for an architect.



  • @StarkRavingSage said:

    Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION".
     

    It's a naming convention; people know what the Dev, Test and Production environments are for.  In fact, I'd say it is the most consistently applied naming convention that I have encountered in my 15+ years working in IT.



  • @RTapeLoadingError said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION".
     

    It's a naming convention; people know what the Dev, Test and Production environments are for.  In fact, I'd say it is the most consistently applied naming convention that I have encountered in my 15+ years working in IT.

    You mean the convention where you pick anywhere between two and five of: Production, Training, Stage, Test, QA, Dev, and DR.  Also, Test and QA can mean pretty much anything.

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Jaime said:

    @RTapeLoadingError said:
    It's a naming convention; people know what the Dev, Test and Production environments are for.  In fact, I'd say it is the most consistently applied naming convention that I have encountered in my 15+ years working in IT.

    You mean the convention where you pick anywhere between two and five of: Production, Training, Stage, Test, QA, Dev, and DR..
    .. and still end up testing development code on the production server?



  • @PJH said:

    @Jaime said:
    @RTapeLoadingError said:
    It's a naming convention; people know what the Dev, Test and Production environments are for.  In fact, I'd say it is the most consistently applied naming convention that I have encountered in my 15+ years working in IT.

    You mean the convention where you pick anywhere between two and five of: Production, Training, Stage, Test, QA, Dev, and DR..
    .. and still end up testing development code on the production server?

    We usually only test production code on the production server. It's vendor delivered and still fails...



  • @Jaime said:

    @RTapeLoadingError said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION".
     

    It's a naming convention; people know what the Dev, Test and Production environments are for.  In fact, I'd say it is the most consistently applied naming convention that I have encountered in my 15+ years working in IT.

    You mean the convention where you pick anywhere between two and five of: Production, Training, Stage, Test, QA, Dev, and DR.  Also, Test and QA can mean pretty much anything.
     

    Yes, that convention.  I don't know of anywhere that has a Production environment that is anything other than the one that users use to do their work i.e. the important one.  If people test in Production or develop in Test then that's a process issue in my book.

    Is what is being said here is that people have a different understanding of what a Production environment is or what a Dev environment is?  That is, when I talk about a Test environment I mean something that...

    • is the same as Production in terms of software versions and patch levels;
    • has Production-like data where possible;
    • may not be as powerful in terms of hardware.
    This environment, being as close to Production as possible, is used to test things like patches, new versions of software, etc.

    Do other people think that a Test environment is something other than this or that an environment used for this purpose is called something else?


  • @RTapeLoadingError said:

    @Jaime said:

    @RTapeLoadingError said:

    @StarkRavingSage said:

    Seriously. I've worked in an environment that had a shop floor, I could see the trucks carrying widgets and doodads. Now I work at a school. I don't want to say that I helped to produce some of the things leaving our doors, yet we have an environment called "PRODUCTION".
     

    It's a naming convention; people know what the Dev, Test and Production environments are for.  In fact, I'd say it is the most consistently applied naming convention that I have encountered in my 15+ years working in IT.

    You mean the convention where you pick anywhere between two and five of: Production, Training, Stage, Test, QA, Dev, and DR.  Also, Test and QA can mean pretty much anything.
     

    Yes, that convention.  I don't know of anywhere that has a Production environment that is anything other than the one that users use to do their work i.e. the important one.  If people test in Production or develop in Test then that's a process issue in my book.

    Is what is being said here is that people have a different understanding of what a Production environment is or what a Dev environment is?  That is, when I talk about a Test environment I mean something that...

    • is the same as Production in terms of software versions and patch levels;
    • has Production-like data where possible;
    • may not be as powerful in terms of hardware.

    This environment, being as close to Production as possible, is used to test things like patches, new versions of software, etc.

    Do other people think that a Test environment is something other than this or that an environment used for this purpose is called something else?

    Standard definitions in my book:

    Stage -- just like production, same hardware, same software, same permissions.  Used for deployment and UAT testing.

    QA -- similar to production, perhaps hardware differences.  Often multiple application components on one box even when they are separate in production.  Developers and/or QA have additional rights here.

    Test -- similar to production, perhaps hardware differences.  Often multiple application components on one box even when they are separate in production.  Developers and/or QA have additional rights here.

    Dev -- play area for developers.  Pretty much anything goes here.  Dev is often transient or sometimes built by the developer on their own system.

    DR -- restore of production system used to diagnose production problems that are hard to replicate in Dev.  Usually physically disconnected from production.

    I have seen so many variants of these that none of the definitions above can be considered anywhere near standard.  The most common variant seems to be the two-environment scenario, usually the result of licensing or hardware cost issues.  With two environments, the second seems to most commonly be called test, but plays the role of everything but production simultaneously.


  • Garbage Person

    Here's how it worked out on the job I just finished:

    Local Test -- The local dev environment, if any. Typically Visual Studio's integrated IIS and locally executed apps. Backed by the same remote resources as Test. Developers use this.

    Test -- In the morning, it's a fully running debug instance of the nightly build. Throughout the day it gets various components updated as necessary to allow Local Test systems to still function. Data loaded in is often vulgar, broken, skewed towards pathological edge cases, and generally unfit for human consumption. Bug reports get reproduced and investigated here. Developers use this.

    QA -- A fully running debug instance of the latest milestone build (wherein everything implemented to date works). Testers, including user and usability testing, as well as those "QA" people use this. Developers go here to reproduce bug reports that they can't reproduce in Test.

    Acceptance QA -- A special case where the QA environment is running a release build of presumed-release-ready code. All the same crap goes on.

    Training -- Whenever a release passes acceptance QA, it appears on the training environment as a completely zero'd out, ready to go system as it would be used in production. Users are trained on this system. Data is completely made up.

    Stage -- When a release passes acceptance QA, it appears on the stage environment as a completely zero'd out, ready to go system as it would be used in production. Data is migrated to it from Production and ultimately it BECOMES the production environment.

    Production -- The currently running production environment. When a new staging environment is synchronized with a new release, these systems get wiped, shut down, and ultimately become the next stage environment.

    DR -- An exact duplicate of the current production environment for emergency failover.

    DR Stage -- An exact duplicate of the staging environment, if Stage and production are colocated. DR and DR Stage rotate just like stage and production do.



  • :belt_onion:

    Your environments are way to sane compared to what I have to use:

    DEV -- Visual Studio installed on VMWare virtual machines. External Windows (web) services provided by the DEV environment (so they break all the time). External mainframe services provided by their TEST environment. Single user Id has access to both Windows and Mainframe environment. Fake data

    TST -- Small incremental deployments of the Release build. Comparable setup as in PROD. External Windows (web) services provided by the TEST environment. External mainframe services provided by their INTEGRATION environment. Technical user Id on Windows is not the same as on Mainframe. Anonymized production data. Used for deployment testing and bugs resolution.

    DUPLEX -- Release build after bigger milestones. Comparable setup and hardware as in PROD. External Windows (web) services provided by the DUPLEX environment. External mainframe services provided by their INTEGRATION environment. Single user Id has access to both Windows and Mainframe environment. Anonymized production data. Used for UAT testing

    PROD -- as in production. Single user Id has access to both Windows and Mainframe environment.

    It's always fun to discuss environment issues with mainframe people because nobody immediately understands what environment you are talking about if you mention the "TEST" environment. Also if someone breaks a service on his DEV server, I'm screwed on mine as well.



  • For one project they're aiming for Dev/Test/Integration/Acceptance/Production.

    Unfortunately, all they have right now is acceptance, which was also used for D/T and I, and which will be moved to P today. On monday they'll start building a new A - yes that's right, they're not copying P, they're doing the whole process again.

    And if you believe that'll go perfect, I have some billion dollar inheritance right here I need your help with.


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