investigating software

Earlier this year Boeing 787 maintenance engineers were given some new instructions by the FAA (The US government's: Federal Aviation Authority). They were informed that if the airplane's electrical generators were left running for 248 days, they would enter the fail-safe mode.  In plain English: they will stop producing electrical power. This short video looks into why that might be and how this information can help us to test our software. The FAA directive is available on their website . A Guardian article: Boeing 787 bug could cause 'loss of control' on Dreamliner

I now cover this issue in more detail in my podcast ! The EPA (The US government's Environmental Protection Agency) recently issued Notice of Violations regarding the emissions from Volkswagen cars. Volkswagen is actually a group of brands, therefore the Notice affects other cars such as Audi, Porsche and Skoda. A lot of the focus has been on what was going on in Volkswagen, for example who knew what was being done? Did the VW testers know? Did they pass the details on etc. What interests me is the wider issue of how this could have been possible for so long?  ( Since 2009 )  If so many cars were affected and for so long, why didn’t we hear about this sooner? Why isn’t there a team of people assigned to finding this stuff out... Oh wait, there is... In the UK these emissions tests are governed by the Vehicle Certification Agency , answering to the Department of Transport. One might expect the manufacturer to be less inclined to investigate the cars emissions, after-all te

Do your hear phrases like "All our users use [insert some technology]" spoken in your office? or possibly "We have a 'corporate standard' desktop". I have a lot. I have since my first job, back in the '90s. It's a commonly held belief in most of the client companies I've worked with. Programmers, testers, project managers and product owners frequently hold faith in the standard build. It -is- a matter of faith. Often based on little more than wishful thinking or at best very loose 'standards'. The problem isn't purely one of client machines or end-users. I've often seen servers defined as 'clones' that in fact have quite different properties. e.g. different versions of java or application servers or even different time. The blind faith on these standard systems has caught myself and colleagues out so many times that I now find myself instantly questioning the assumption, and encouraging others to do the same. Even in thi