Technology Evolves Because Humans Make Mistakes
When I was a junior developer,
a colleague once shared a story that stayed with me.
He told me about his time working on a service at a major telecom company in Korea.
One day, according to him,
a single mistake by a developer deleted all the source code on the server.
At the time, there was no version control.
No Git.
No proper backup system.
The server was the source of truth.
When it was gone, the project was effectively gone.
After a long silence, the team lead reportedly said:
“Well… since it’s come to this, let’s go grab some makgeolli.”
It wasn’t meant as a joke.
It was a moment of resignation.
An Unexpected Savior, and an Unspoken Rule
Just as they were about to leave,
a freelance developer on the team spoke up quietly.
“I might have something…
I’ve been zipping the source code every day
and keeping copies on my personal computer.”
The atmosphere changed instantly.
Here’s the ironic part:
what he did was technically a violation of the company’s security policy.
Storing source code on a personal device was strictly forbidden.
But at that moment,
no one objected.
Saving the project mattered more than enforcing the rules.
They turned back from their drinks, returned to the office, extracted the ZIP files, and worked through the night.
The recovery wasn’t perfect, but the project survived.
Why This Rarely Happens Today
My colleague added that today, this kind of incident would be almost impossible.
- We have Git
- We have branching strategies
- We have automated backups
- We have CI/CD pipelines
Not because humans stopped making mistakes,
but because technology evolved with the assumption that they never will.
Technology Is Built on Human Imperfection
People make mistakes.
And the history of software engineering isn’t about eliminating them.
It’s about building systems that can survive them.
- Version control exists because files can be deleted
- Backups exist because data will eventually be lost
- Automation exists because humans aren’t perfect
Great technology doesn’t demand perfect people.
It protects imperfect ones.
Why This Story Still Matters
That half-finished makgeolli night, as my colleague told it,
perfectly captured why modern software looks the way it does.
Technology doesn’t reject human error,
it evolves because of it.
That’s why this story stayed with me.