August 2008
Overriding MSBuild variables via command line... →
While working on a build script for the Pex Extensions project, I wanted to be able to specify the version of Pex which the project was built against for use within the AssemblyInfo and file…
Continuous Integration Builds for CodePlex... →
As many of you might be aware, I maintain the IronEditor project on CodePlex. I like CodePlex, I find the wiki and issue tracking to be useful, but I find the directory structure and searchablity…
Checking Out Code on a Library Schedule →
Your local public library lets you check out books for a few weeks at a time. Developers shouldn’t ever use this as a model, but it can happen. A developer new to a language or framework is…
Me Versus Them →
This past week was a bit more frustrating than what I am used to. Almost everyone and everything I came into contact with had a slight “Alice in Wonderland” aspect. For nearly three straight days I…
Agile Testing - Flexible Code, Flexible Testing →
Part of the promise of agile is that the code can change almost as rapidly as the specifications. For project managers, this is a great blessing, and agile has had tremendous business impact. But…
Heusser's First Law Of Software Engineering →
I got to use this term twice in the past couple of weeks, so I’m going to call it a real thing now. Here goes: Heusser’s First Law of Software Engineering A conceptual model of a bunch of…
When The Recruiter Doesn’t Understand The Job →
A posting on craigslist in the Software Jobs section:
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This is a quality assurance for manufacturing, not software quality assurance, but one wonders if the…
How many points are there in a five-point star? →
I’m currently reading Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design by Donald Gause and Gerald Weinberg. The book was written twenty years ago but it is still spot-on, which is really…
Subject Line Failure, Or Threat To Tell Your... →
Bizjournals.com offers good advice with its latest e-mail’s subject line:
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If I waited too long to adjust to my ma, I got a whuppin. Frequent whuppins led me to a…
My other sites →
Wondering why I did not post anything here for a long time? I have been active at my other sites. Take a look if you want to know what is going on with me lately.
twitter.com/zeljkofilipin: my…
Rapid Test Environments - Supporting automation... →
Over the past few days I have come across multiple instances where users have wanted to run processes/commands within guest virtual machines in a software test lab environment. The ability to run…
Crisp Meetings →
A good crisp meeting can be better than strolling through leaves on a fall day. By crisp I mean:
The meeting has an agenda.
The agenda went out far in advance.
The leading has a strong owner who…
More Timing Precision Enhancements →
Okay, so my last post on timing precision was interesting, but then I went back and started doing more thinking and I found a few ways to get even better precision out of a typical timing attack….
Documenting Head Knowledge →
I test multiple products for multiple Lead Testers. I simply love it. I am never bored and my mind and eyes stay sharp because of it. The challenges are exciting, the pace is generally fast, and the…
Links and slides from “Testing Web Applications... →
Here are the links and slides from my talk today at Skills Matter on testing web applications with Selenium.
Download Powerpoint slides from here.
Selenium-core: selenium-core.openqa.org/
…
Back up your Windows desktop to S3 with SecoBackup →
I found SecoBackup to be a good tool for backing up a Windows machine to S3. They have a ‘free community edition’ version, but you will still pay more in terms of your S3 costs than what you would…
Gallery of Stack Traces: If QA Wrote The Stack... →
Okay, this one does not occur in nature, but man, if only:
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THE HAPPY PATH IS EVIL →
Hansel and Gretel will back me up on that one….. In the words of Robert Frost “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”. Who is…
Bruce Lee! →
Someone on the Software Testing discussion list just posted a link to quotes from Bruce Lee, the famous American-Born Martial Artist and Actor. As your read the quotes, it’s pretty clear that…
Taming the Beast (a.k.a. how to test AJAX... →
Posted by John Thomas and Markus Clermont
This is the second of a two part blog series titled ‘Taming the Beast : How to test AJAX applications’. In part one we discussed some…
Transitioning from testing one sort of application... →
I’ve just started my second round of teaching Black Box Software Testing Foundations for AST members. Besides the obvious benefits of what I consider to be a very well designed and rigorous…
Opensource .NET talks schedule →
We have worked out the schedule for opensource .NET talks at Skills Matter in London for the next few months. Here are the dates to note in your calendar - more detail on sessions will follow:
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The Crowd Goes Virtual →
James Whittaker highlighted uTest last week with his post title posted the future of software testing (part 1), where he talked about how the crowd was the next logical step for testing:
…
The Tester’s Vocabulary: Zool →
Today’s term: a zool.
Zool: a row in a database, added via an INSERT command, or rendered in the presentation layer (client application or Web interface) that is expected to contain…
Developers Say The Darn'dest Things →
I sent an email to a dev today, asking why his new sort-by-column functionality for a grid was not actually sorting the values properly. For example: an ascending sort would rearrage alphanumeric…
Root Cause of Singletons →
by Miško Hevery Since I have gotten lots of love/hate mail on the Singletons are Pathological Liars and Where Have All the Singletons Gone I feel obliged to to do some root cause analysis. …
Pylot 1.11 Released - Web Performance Tool →
I just did a new release Pylot (Web Performance Tool). No new features; just some internal fixes and a small change to the console output.
Grab it here: …
Faking Experience in Software Testing from India... →
The entire e-mail conversation between me and someone is available for you without his permission. I have masked his mail id and name to protect his privacy. …
the future of software testing (part 2) →
In order for testsourcing to take hold of the future of testing, two key technological barriers must be broken: the reusability of test artifacts and the accessibility of user environments. Let…
Timing Precision →
If you’ve been watching the Olympics you might have see the pretty amazingly close call between Phelps and Cavic. I looked at lots of different pictures and video of it and everyone was saying it…
Evaluating Continuous Integration: Itself →
I am not writing about how to evaluate a CI Server, if one needs to evaluate them the best resource I can suggest is CI Feature Matrix just list out your requirements before going to this page,…
Ruby refugees flocking to Python? →
I just wanted to put it out there that I know at least one person who was very fired up about Ruby, only to find out that all the available Ruby jobs are for Ruby-on-Rails programmers. He doesn’t…
RTFL →
No, this is not a misspelling for ROTFL, but rather a variant of RTFM. It stands for Read The F…riendly Log. It’s a troubleshooting technique that is very basic, yet surprisingly overlooked. I…
Tech Debt - The IT Manager's Dillema →
Chris Sterling has a Thoughtful Blog Post about the IT Manager’s (nearly inevitable) decision to take on tech debt in order to hit a project date. Here’s the comment I left on his bog in reply:
Copy-Paste in Windows Command Prompt →
Here’s a great tip if you work a lot with the Windows Command Prompt aka cmd.exe. Wouldn’t you just love it if you could easily copy-paste stuff in the Command Prompt window? Well, you can!
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Easy Copy-Paste in the Windows Command Prompt... →
Here’s a great tip if you work a lot with the Windows Command Prompt aka cmd.exe. Wouldn’t you just love it if you could easily copy-paste stuff in the Command Prompt window? Well, you can!
…
IBM Rational Quality Manager/RTLM Demos →
IBM is in the process of developing Rational Quality Manager - the next generation test management tool from IBM. You can access the beta program here. Rational Test Lab Management is a new…
New screencast on events handling in TestComplete →
Nick Olivo presents a new screencast that demonstrates how to use event handling in TestComplete. Viewers will learn how to have a screenshot posted to the log any time an error takes place.
…
New screencast on events handling in TestComplete →
Nick Olivo presents a new screencast that demonstrates how to use event handling in TestComplete. Viewers will learn how to have a screenshot posted to the log any time an error takes place.
…
Please stop re-inventing the wheel. →
Please stop re-inventing the wheel.
There are a lot of software wheels that get re-invented all the time. Re-inventing is a time consuming waste that many projects can cut. In almost…
uTesters: New Forum + Prizes! →
Attention uTesters: We are celebrating our general availability launch with a brand new community forum. Right now, if you’re already a member of the uTester community, you can join our new…
What constitutes a unit test? →
When I speak of unit tests, sometimes there is a slight communication breakdown. Just becuase a developer wrote a test in the unit test harness does not a unit test make. This post does a good job…
Automation reduces cycle time Part III →
“If automation can not reduce cycle time, save testing cost and reduce manual testing errors, why do automation at all” said a colleague of mine in a discussion over mail chain yesterday. After all,…
Event Improvement →
I find it extremely funny that if I am asked to look for a Process Improvement, I go blind. I come close to panic. I suddenly don’t even know what a Process is or if I even utilize any. The quote…
Writing code for today and tommorow →
Writing code for today and tomorrow
Any developer working at a pace that will allow them to stay employed creates bugs. Testers get excited about a lot of different bugs. Testers…
Net Neutrality Defined by Tim Berners-Lee: →
Net Neutrality:
“If I pay to connect to the Net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the Net with the same or higher quality of service; Then you and I can communicate across…
Concordion: Agile Acceptance Testing with... →
I finally had some time to take a look at Concordion, an acceptance testing tool that I’ve heard about on several conferences. Concordion is an interesting alternative to FIT. It is developed by
Just Like An Old Friend, Kick Yahoo! When It’s... →
g33klady sends a screen capture of another integration problem with Yahoo! Apparently, some character is showing as broken on its news pages:
You know, Yahoo! gets a lot of play on these…
The humans are dead, part 3 →
The machines have made their move in the previous episode. To sum it up, they are more accurate, work faster, harder, for a longer period of time, for less money, with no complaints and no…
Erasing history in tests →
Something I say about the ideal of Agile design is that, at any moment when you might ship the system, the code should look as if someone clever had designed a solution tailored to do exactly what…
