Know the target environment of your application

As a software developer, I believe my job is not only to write source code. I like to know what is around my application, how it will be operated, etc.

There is a fragment of a discussion flew above the table today. Participants are a lead developer (LD), developers from another team (D), and the boss (B):

LD: Guys, on which version of JBoss do you run BlazeDS service?

D: On JBoss 4.2.3GA
...
B: Are you sure guys? I'm sure you don't use that version. Actually you run BlazeDS using the downloadable turnkey distribution, what is a Tomcat packed together with BlazeDS and samples...

D, LD: [fried fish]

D: uh, you are right...

Imagine a situation, that a scuba diver uses not suitable gas mixture for diving. The chance of injury or death is high in that case due to decompression sickness or oxygen toxicity. If you deploy your application to a non-suitable environment it will lead to its injury or death - and that happens, when the developers has no clue about the target environment.

The Fish