--- title: The First Question I Ask Now Where Does My Code Actually Go description: A developer shares a lesson learned from experience: before writing any code on a new project, understand how code flows between environments (DEV, UAT, and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-first-question-i-ask-now-where-does-my-code-actually-go-3rmvlaywi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The First Question I Ask Now Where Does My Code Actually Go | daily.dev og:description: A developer shares a lesson learned from experience: before writing any code on a new project, understand how code flows between environments (DEV, UAT, and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-first-question-i-ask-now-where-does-my-code-actually-go-3rmvlaywi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/3RMVLayWI.png og:image:alt: The First Question I Ask Now Where Does My Code Actually Go og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The First Question I Ask Now Where Does My Code Actually Go **[Raj Kumar](https://daily.dev/sources/vurmwmx5kchc7vocobisb)** · [@techieraj](https://daily.dev/techieraj) · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer shares a lesson learned from experience: before writing any code on a new project, understand how code flows between environments (DEV, UAT, and MAIN/PRODUCTION). The piece describes typical mistakes like pushing directly to the wrong environment or not understanding deployment promotion paths, and recommends spending 30 minutes asking about branch structure and deployment flow to avoid confusion and wasted time later. ## Content I've made this mistake enough times to learn it the hard way. You join a new project. You're excited. You want to start coding immediately. So you don't really ask questions about how environments work. You just... assume and figure it out. Then you push something and break UAT. Or you're not sure which branch to use. Or your code somehow ends up in a weird state. And now you're debugging process instead of writing features. So now I ask questions first. Every project has this basic flow: **DEV** → where you actually build stuff. Your feature branch lives here. You break things. You fix them. It's your sandbox. **UAT** → this mirrors production. It should be stable. This is where actual testing happens. If you treat UAT like another dev environment, you're asking for release chaos. **MAIN/PRODUCTION** → real users. Real data. Real stakes. Simple, right? But here's where I used to mess up: not understanding the actual promotion path. Which branches matter. How code actually flows between environments. What happens if I push directly to UAT by accident. Does it auto-deploy? Does someone have to manually deploy? One wrong assumption and suddenly someone's trying to debug why their feature is in UAT when it wasn't supposed to be there yet. Or why production broke when they thought they were deploying to UAT. So my rule now: **Before I touch any code, I know the flow.** Not because I'm trying to be perfect. But because not knowing costs time. Causes conflicts. Creates last-minute debugging sessions. Take 30 minutes. Ask someone how code gets promoted. Understand which branch is which. Know what each environment actually represents. That's it. Thirty minutes that saves hours of confusion later. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How Coding with QA in Mind Has Made Me a Better Developer](https://daily.dev/posts/how-coding-with-qa-in-mind-has-made-me-a-better-developer-g9hgvoo1g) · Atomic Spin · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [3 Questions to go from thinking like a Scrappy to Senior Dev](https://daily.dev/posts/3-questions-to-go-from-thinking-like-a-scrappy-to-senior-dev-q6nxtv15i) · Planet Python · 7 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-first-question-i-ask-now-where-does-my-code-actually-go-3rmvlaywi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-first-question-i-ask-now-where-does-my-code-actually-go-3rmvlaywi","headline":"The First Question I Ask Now Where Does My Code Actually Go","text":"A developer shares a lesson learned from experience: before writing any code on a new project, understand how code flows between environments (DEV, UAT, and MAIN/PRODUCTION). 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