fail fast

present singular third person fails fast · participle present failing fast · participle past failed fast · past failed fast

1. computingTo report immediately any condition likely to cause a failure, rather than attempting to continue.

   In lieu of those unneeded hooks, write code to fail fast and prevent gaps from becoming a problem.

   2015, Rachel Alt-Simmons, Agile by Design, page 182

   3 more examples

   To prevent these gaps from being a problem, write your code to fail fast. Use assertions to signal the limits of your design; if someone tries to use something that isn't implemented, the assertion will cause his tests to fail.

   2008, James Shore, Shane Warden, The Art of Agile Development, page 324

   Adding abstract to the base class causes your code to fail fast with an error that's easier to fix.

   2020, Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene, Head First C#, page 339

   One of the most important best practices is to fail fast. Code the service in such a way that unrecoverable errors are discovered as early as possible and, if such an error is detected, have the service fail immediately.

   2020, Gabriel N. Schenker, Learn Docker – Fundamentals of Docker 19.x, page 254

2. businessTo fail earlier rather than later, thus minimizing the fallout and allowing for timely redeployment of resources to another business case or business model.

   fail fast and pivot