Aug. 26, 2020, 1:30 p.m.
What's CI/CD?
CI/CD is a philosophy around pushing and testing code constantly in smaller batches.
Technically
The TL;DR
Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are philosophies and toolsets for shipping code: instead of big, infrequent releases, developers push and test code constantly in smaller batches.
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Historically, it was expensive and risky to ship software, so updates were infrequent and bundled together
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Cheaper servers and better tooling have changed the equation: now developers can ship frequently and test often
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Continuous Integration means integrating and testing your code changes automatically, while Continuous Delivery means you deploy those changes often
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Tools like CircleCI let developers write automated tests, monitor builds, and locate problems fast so they can iterate and fix quickly
CI/CD is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for how startups ship code, and is even (slowly) making its way into larger companies.