A development practice where code changes are automatically merged, built, and tested multiple times per day to detect integration problems early. It maintains a constantly working version of the software throughout development.
Coined by Grady Booch in 1991 and popularized by Extreme Programming. 'Continuous' from Latin 'continuus' (uninterrupted) and 'integration' from Latin 'integrare' (to make whole). The practice emerged as software teams grew larger and integration became more complex.
Before continuous integration, teams would have 'integration hell'—weeks of painful merging at the end of projects where nobody's code worked together! CI was revolutionary because it shifted this pain from rare, massive events to tiny, manageable daily fixes.
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