Notes on testing, automation, and software craft.
There’s a great scene in the Simpsons where the Monorail salesman comes to town and everyone (except Lisa of course) is quickly entranced by Monorail fever… He has an answer for every question and guess what? The Monorail will solve all the problems… somehow. The hype around… more »
In 316 AD Emperor Constantine issued a new coin, there's nothing too unique about that in itself. But this coin is significant due to its pagan/roman religious symbols. Why is this odd? Constantine had converted himself, and probably with little consultation his empire to… more »
I play a card game called cribbage. I often play it with my son. One interesting part of the game is the muggins rule. This means that you can claim points from other players turns, if they miscount the score. The scoring is slightly nerve racking, with each of us double and… more »
I was lucky enough to have started my career in a small company and then in a start up. Both provided me with an environment perfect for learning. I sat with experts who took time out of their day to help answer my questions. From them, I learned the basics of what I still use… more »
I recently open sourced a simple Micropython library for LoRaWAN on the Raspberry Pi Pico. (If you are interested, You can find it on GitHub.) If you are unsure what that all means, let me unpack it for you... Micropython is a slimmed down version of Python 3.x that works on… more »
“Works on my machine!” “Fails most epicly on my test system!” “Oh, wait… it works on CI but fails in Test env 3.” Sound familiar? These sorts of conversations are thankfully a thing of the past. Wait, hold on are you still having these sorts of conversations? That's probably… more »
Sometimes people discuss test engineers and QA as if they were a sort of police force, patrolling the streets of code looking for offences and offenders. While I can see the parallels, the investigation, checking the veracity of claims and a belief that we are making things… more »
This is the story behind the VW emissions scandal, that so far has cost the company over $33bn. We look into the technology issues VW faced and the investigations that uncovered the problem. The MP3 (Audio) file is available here. more »
As part of an ongoing project to learn more about what we've got wrong to help us improve, I look at the Therac 25 incidents, a devastating collection of software failures that often rank in the top 10 of civilian radiation accidents. The Therac 25 radiation therapy device… more »
In this episode, we look at the Post Office Horizon scandal, an app that caused what some people are describing as the largest miscarriage of justice in British legal history. We look at some bugs, the legal judgements and what might have gone wrong at the Post Office to allow… more »