Notes on testing, automation, and software craft.
Heraclitus wrote these words 2500 years ago: "Ever newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers." or paraphrased in more colloquial English: You never stand in the same river twice. Known as the "The obscure one" to some of his contemporaries, he was known to make… more »
Take a pack of cards, shuffle them well, and place them on the desk in front of you. Could you accurately tell me what the order of the cards would be, without looking? By Rosapicci Own work, CC BY SA 4.0 Now spend 2 weeks in a software development team, writing code & using… more »
Shutter sync is an interesting artefact generated when we video moving objects. Take a look at this video of a Helicopter taking off: <iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="266" src="https://www.youtube nocookie.com/embed/yr3ngmRuGUc?feature=player embedded"… more »
I remember teaching my son to ride his bike. No, Strike that, Helping him to learn to ride his bike. It’s that way round – if we are honest – he was changing his brain so it could adapt to the mechanism and behaviour of the bike. I was just holding the bike, pushing and… more »
Thank you to the colleague/customer/product owner, who found the bug I missed. That oversight, was (at least in part) my mistake. I've been thinking about what happened and what that means to me and my team. I'm happy you told me about the issue you found, because you... 1)… more »
Google Maps directs me to and from my client sites. I've saved the location of the client's car parks, when I start the app in the morning it knows where I want to go. When I start it at the end of the day, Google knows where I want to go. This is great! It guides me around… more »
After a weary few hours sorting through, re running and manually double checking the "automated test" results, the team decide they need to "run the tests again!", that's a problem to the team. Why? because they are too slow. The 'test' runs take too long and they won't have the… more »
“We got a good run from the tests” the tester stated. “So what’s the story?” the scrum master asked. “85% Pass” comes the reply, meekly. “OK, just need to fix that 5% then.” The scrum master announces before striding off to announce that the team is only a couple of % away from… more »
When we switch people from programming to testing and vice versa may reduce the quality of our software. I’ll get some quick objections out of the way: But, A person can be a great tester and programmer. Yes I agree. But, Programmers do a lot of good testing. Yes I agree. None… more »
A common but often unnoticed figure of speech is the synecdoche. When I say “Beijing opened its borders”. We know I mean “The People's Republic of China has opened its borders.”) That’s a Synecdoche, in this case I named part of something (Beijing) to mean the whole (P.R.C.).… more »