Meaning of "Ship it!"

I wrote the letter

Dear XXX,

I am writing to inform that I found the workaround solution for bug...

and got the answer

Great! Ship it!

If I correctly guessed, Great! means approval of my solution, but what does Ship it! mean? Is it slang or some special emotion?

Solution 1:

There's a (in)famous software development quote, relayed with tongue firmly in cheek: "Hey! It compiles! Ship it!"

In software development, there are many steps a conscientious developer must go through between writing the code and sending ("shipping") the completed product to the end-user. A willingness on the part of the developer to ship as soon as the code compiles indicates either extreme hubris or carelessness: no testing has been performed by the developer (to verify that the changes work and haven't broken anything else), no 3rd-party testing has been performed (to verify that the change doesn't break other systems and is acceptable to users), no documentation has been written...

So when used by someone else in regard to your work, "Ship it!" implies confidence in your abilities: "You're one in a million, man — I have confidence that it'll work as you say it does."

Solution 2:

Ship it means deliver the goods. He is telling you to go ahead with executing your solution.

Solution 3:

"Shipping" in the software sense means to deliver it to the customer. It derives from the old practice of literally shipping boxes containing disks/CDs in the mail.

@Shog9 had a good description of the origin of "Ship it!", but I think in modern practice it no longer has any particular implication of confidence or recklessness. I have seen it used in several ways:

Go ahead and implement the solution.
Get it to the customer as soon as possible.
(usually tongue in cheek) As @shog9 described, "Who needs to test it? Just ship it!"