It’s generally better to build a good seed dataset than to rely on importing production data.

a) Seed datasets can be shared by all developers, rather than just those who have access to production.

b) Rake db:seed is SO MUCH easier than setting up something to easily import production dbs

c) Having 100s of thousdands of peoples personal info on your machine is fail. Sanitizing takes time.

d) Don’t write code that you will need the production db in order to fix… if your code is that complex, it’s probably time to step back and figure out why.