February 2008
Matt Heusser on Technical Debt →
I have been reading Matt’s blog for a while now. Since October last year, Matt has been periodically expanding and evolving his thinking about ‘technical debt’ - the small, seemingly inconsequential…
Technical Debt Peer Conference →
Matt Heusser is having a peer conference. I believe it’s his first.
It’s on the topic of technical debt.
The idea of technical debt seems to be that there are tasks you are free to neglect when…
Test experience versus speedy learning →
What if your company implemented this new captcha and
you had to test it:
Following the thinking
of Jeff over at Coding Horror…
What software testers do best is …
Real Programmers Code in Binary →
From Corey Goldberg’s blog.
Please notice the comment.
Looks like that keyboard has one key too many.
Vista Rant #3 - And yet another boundary defect in... →
This morning I installed Vista SP1 onto my laptop. I was pretty excited about this release because it promises better performance as compared to the original release (but, I have not yet worked with…
Unresolved issues in Agile →
Here are three unresolved debates that many people seem to have agreed to stop having:
When do Agile teams need to be deftly led in the right direction, and when can managers/leaders/ScrumMasters/those-responsible-for-a-budget just sit back and let them figure it out?
On the spectrum between intensely-focused specialists and generalists who do everything they do with the same skill,...
Technical Debt - Workshop →
I am creating this URL as a permanent home for the Call for Participation. Details to follow.
Get Success to drive your software testing... →
If you want your software testing consultancy to succeed, first ask what sort of success you want. You probably have some ideas on this. For example, you may want to run an exclusive software consultancy with a reputation for excellence, or make a million before your 30, or as I do, you want to […]
AgileJedi.com WatiN Evaluation →
AgileJedi wrote a nice evaluation of WatiN automating GMail at Webtest Tool Round-up (Round 1:WatiN). GMail is not the most easy web application to automate, so I finally tried with InCisif.net. From AgileJedi you can download the C# code using WatiN and here is the C# code using InCisif.net.
public const string STR_InCisifNetSupportEMail = "support@incisif.net";
public const string...
Why my life is hopeless →
A large number of the submissions to the Agile2008 Examples stage do not use examples to clarify or explain. As a result, they are too vague to evaluate.
And people wonder why I despair.
A clear violation of the Single Responsibility... →
(From XKCD) Should a class be a factory for itself?
The Potential and Risks of Keyword Based Testing →
By Hans Buwalda, CTO, LogiGear Corporation Introduction
Keyword based testing is gaining ground. More and more organizations see this model, in which tests are not scripted but written as a series of keywords with arguments, as a valuable alternative to record and playback, or scripting of tests. A good theoretical basis for keywords can be found in the well known automation book Software Test...
Geolocation Mashup To Visualize My Blog Visitors →
I just did a Geolocation mashup to visualize where my blog readers are coming from
on a particular day. Below is a visualization of my US/Canada visitors from February
14, 2008.
All of the data is based off of IP addresses from my referrer logs.
To see how to do this, check out: http://www.goldb.org/geo_maps
IEEE Article →
Posted by Patrick Copeland, Engineering Productivity Director Article covering some of Google’s Test culture. In the article, there’s some focus on the ideas of “incremental testing” and how practices are changing in the software as a service world. Even with all of our drive to find better approaches, one thing to note is that we still believe in the fundamentals of...
Apodora →
Apodora is new web testing tool, it uses IronPython as the programming language. They have a video that demonstrates mostly their record mode. If you watch the video you can see that it is necessary to enter manually a lot of information. If you read their About page, they describe an interesting concept of UI Object, stored in a global database and that can be maintained globally. I always...
Patterns of daily stand-up meetings →
A previous coworker of mine Travis Illig recently blogged about why he thinks “It’s
not OK to skip the standup”. In this post he provides reference to another about
the patterns
of daily stand-up meetings and this is great information for those who wonder
about or are thinking about daily standup meetings.
“Daily stand-up meetings” now days are attached to the...
The End Of Double Spaces And Indentation In... →
The Web and HTML have robbed us of double spaced sentences and indented paragraphs.
According to the Modern Language Association*, writing
should be double spaced and paragraphs should be indented.**
More and more written content has moved to the web. By now, it is the most important
medium for disseminating information to a mass audience.
When writing text that will be rendered in web...
Give Testers Power! An Interview with Test Common →
Test Common editor Bruce Daley commented on my “Man and Machine” article and then interviewed me about it last week. The interview is here: An Interview with Jonathan Kohl. We talked about automated testing issues, and giving testers power with automation tools, instead of making them feel like they are being replaced.
Lightning Shows →
Summary: Google and blogorrhoea have turned many conference tutorials into anachronisms. I propose an alternative that’s more like a Lightning Talk session.
I’m reviewing a pile of submissions to Agile2008. (You can too!) I just noticed a pattern in my comments. Tutorials often have this structure:
Here’s a problem that needs solving. I have a solution.
Here I demonstrate the solution…...
I added IE 8 to the user agent switcher import... →
The IE
team announced what the user agent string for IE 8 will be:
Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0)
This particular one is for Vista. They’ve decided not to use the ‘b’ in ‘MSIE 8.0b’
for the beta version this time due to issues they’ve encountered in the past with
that approach. I’ve updated my User Agent Switcher import file to...
Browser Compatibility Testing Risk Analysis →
I did my first presentation for the Phoenix
Software Quality Association (PSQA) yesterday evening on “Browser Compatibility
Testing Risk Analysis”. Those who attended learned: “The art of trimming browsers from a browser compatibility test list by knowing
your users, understanding how the browser works, OS & browser facts versus misconceptions,
and grouping browsers by...
Novell == Suckers? →
I bet that interoperability deal doesn’t
sound so great now.
TotT: Too Many Tests →
In the movie Amadeus, the Austrian Emperor criticizes Mozart’s music as having “too many notes.” How many tests are “too many” to test one function? Consider the method decide: public void decide(int a, int b, int c, int d, int e, int f) { if (a > b || c > d || e > f) { DoOneThing(); } else { DoAnother(); } // One-letter variable names are used here only...
Subtlely →
There is no subtle way to carry a hula hoop on public transportation. I got the purple one.
Annoucement: Selenium Users’ Meetup - Monday,... →
I’ll be attending the Selenium Users Open Evening this Monday, February 25. The event will be at the Google campus in Mountain View, California. Most of the core Selenium development team will be in attendance, traveling from as far away as Tokyo and London. Here’s a blurb about it from the sign-up page : With representatives from all the major Selenium projects on hand to present ideas,...
InCisif.net 2.1 - The new features →
Here are the new features we are working on for InCisif.net 2.1 The record mode has now a new tab named Source Code. This tab shows in real time the source code generated with color coding. C#, VB.NET and IronPython are supported. See our screen cast.
The record mode DOM viewer can now show the HTML attributes of the control selected. Errors and failed assertions screenshots. In case...
Scripting Exploratory Smack Down →
Vinayak writes: “I do feel Exploratory Testing has importance in SCRUM-like projects and also scripted testing has its role in specific contexts. I would really like to see your views on how do you think test design, test documentation, and test execution can optimally take place in SCRUM-like situations.”
It’s not either-or, it’s both.
Scripted tests can be useful,...
The Gerrard School of Testing →
Paul Gerrard believes there are irrefutable testing axioms. This is not surprising, since all axioms are by definition irrefutable. To call something an axiom is to say you will cover your ears and hum whenever someone calls that principle into question. An axiom is a fundamental assumption on which the rest of your reasoning will be based.
They are not universal axioms for our field. Instead...
The Bangalore Roti Curry! Now comes with free*... →
Yesterday, I presented a guest lecture on “Questioning Specification and Requirements as a skilled tester” at Edista Testing’s newly launched, really unique career program, which I think, can be titled as “Keep learning software testing and we’ll keep supporting you to do that” as they intend to keep track of the progress of one’s testing career, knowledge...
Software Development Process Fusion Part 1 →
I first brought this idea up publicly last year at the Agile Vancouver conference with a promise of an example. What follows is an attempt to fulfill that promise. This has turned out to be rather long, so it will appear as a blog series. I grew up in an environment with a lot of music. My grandfather had a rare mastery over a wide variety of musical instruments, and family gatherings were full of...
An occasional alternative to mocks? →
I’m test-driving some Rails helpers. A helper is a method that runs in a context full of methods magically provided by Rails. Some of those methods are of the type that’s a classic motivation for mocks or stubs: if you don’t want them to blow up, you have to do some annoying behind-the-scenes setup. (And because Rails does so much magic for you, it can be hard for the novice to have a clue what...
Etymology of "Foo" →
“Foo” is my favorite word. I use it all over the place. When programming, it is the
name of my quick junk files… it is a temporary variable name while i figure out
code. We programmers love our foo.
For those that want the origins and etymology, there is a great RFC about it:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3092.txt
Conference of the Association for Software Testing... →
CALL FOR PAPERS
The 3rd Annual Conference of the Association of Software Testing (CAST) 2008 http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org/CAST2008 Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 14-16, 2008 Beyond the Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing Keynote Presentation by Gerald M. Weinberg
The Association for Software Testing is pleased to announce its third annual conference...
Would My Watir Tests Run With Firewatir? →
I saw this question at watir-general.
Short story is, there is no simple solution at the moment. I am just porting my tests from Watir to Firewatir and I have noticed two major differences:
Firewatir does not see page text the same way as Watir does:
Watir would see “logged in as name”.
Firewatir would see “logged in as\n\nname”.
Firefox sees relative urls in links, while Internet Explorer...
Load/Performance Test Plan Template →
Comprehensive template to help develop a Load/Performance Test Plan.
Things to accept →
I was reading Reader’s Digest, and noticed a quote attributed to Brendan Fraser: Everybody has bad hair decades.
I’ve accepted that 2000-2009 is mine. Other ideas I’ve had to work at accepting in the past include Not everybody is as passionate about work stuff as I am some are more
some are less
some are passionate about different aspects of work
This is ok
Sometimes I should slow down...
Do or Die Windows Vista →
As I type I am downloading Windows Vista Service Pack 1 made available to MSDN
subscribers. I’ve been telling myself for quite some time to grin and bear my
Vista problems, give it a good chance, and finally: This sucks, but I’ll hold out
to see if SP1 makes Vista less annoying and less problematic than Windows XP.
I really want to keep you but…Do or die Vista. Do or die.
Real Programmers Code In Binary →
Not looking my usual self →
Due to a persistent hacking attempt over the last few days, I’ve done an emergency upgrade. Things will probably look ugly until the weekend, so apologies to anyone visiting!
Problem Solving Heuristic #1142: Spin →
I find that this Problem Solving Heuristic works when nothing else does.
Situate yourself such that you can easily move about in a circle. Stand, sit on a chair with wheels, grab your kidling’s spin toy, whatever.
Now rotate yourself clockwise. If moving clockwise feels wrong, move counter clockwise. If that feels wrong as well, switch back and forth. Move at whatever speed you like -...
Contextual blindness: or How to take things... →
Many testers are familiar with the concept of inattentional blindness (or at least should be in my opinion). Basically inattentional blindness occurs when we are so visually focused on a task or object that we completely fail to see something out of the ordinary.
But, I am going to introduce my own neologism that I will refer to as contextual blindness. Contextual blindness occurs when someone...
Breakthrough code quality metric: WTFs/minute →
Kudos to Greg for
passing on this brilliant code quality metric:
Things to look out for in your agile (or Agile)... →
Jonathan Kohl pointed me at a position paper from Brian Marick for the Agile Coach Camp.
If you’re in the middle of adopting agile, it’s well worth a read. You can find it here: http://wiki.agilecoachcamp.org/tiki-index.php?page=BrianMarickPositionPaper
Getting Things Done via your Inbox →
I’ve been Getting Things Done long before it was cool to GTD. My method is simple: I keep my list of things to get done in my email Inbox. Once I get a thing done, I move it to a different folder, and I forget about it. This forces me to deal with incoming email at a very rapid pace. I either keep it in the Inbox because I know I’ll work on it in the next few hours (or days), or I...
Next Naked Agilists →
The next Naked Agilist tele-conference will be Saturday April 26th 2008 at 8pm GMT.
Jeff Patton Agile Usability references →
On the agile-usability mailing list, Jeff Patton wrote something very like this:
One past paper I constantly reference is Lynn Miller’s customer involvement in Agile projects paper, Gerrard Meszaros’ Agile usability paper, and last year’s paper from Heather Williams on the UCD perspective, before and after Agile.
All these are great papers - and I know there’s more.
If he thinks they’re...
MS SQL Server is brain dead →
Another post in the series “Why does this have to be so painful???” I had to insert some data in a MS SQL Server database (don’t ask, I just had to.) The same data was inserted into a MySQL database using a simple statement of the form: INSERT INTO table1 (col1, col2, col3) VALUES (a,b,c), (d,e,f), (x,y,z); I tried to do the same in MS SQL Server, and I was getting mysterious...
A tagging meme reveals I short-change design →
There’s one of those tagging memes going around. This one is: “grab the nearest book, open to page 123, go down to the 5th sentence, and type up the 3 following sentences.”
My first two books had pictures on p. 123.
The next three (Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, AppleScript: the Definitive Guide, and Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life) didn’t have...
Python - 15 Line HTTP Server - Web Interface For... →
I write a lot of command line tools and scripts in Python. Sometimes I need to kick
them off remotely. A simple way to do this is to launch a tiny web server that listens
for a specific request to start the script.
I add a “WebRequestHandler” class to my script and call it from my main method. There
is a “do_something()” method in the class. You call your code from this...
Educating customers on testing →
Everyone has heard about testing and unfortunately everyone has heard about it from different sources that say different and contradicting things.
One of the customer I worked for thought - testing is about delivering bug free product - which, in my opinion and many other experts with whom I interact is an impractical idea about testing.Another customer I worked for thought - testing is about
