Owner: Quality Frog - Questioning Software URL:http://www.questioningsoftware.com Join Date: Sat, 26 May 2007 14:43:36 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Questioning Software. Ben Simo's software quality and testing blog. Topics include: heuristics, test automation, exploratory testing, model-based testing, test education, and more. Site statistics:Click here
Retraining the unskilled to code software 2008-03-02 10:32:00 I stumbled across a 46 year old newspaper article about how automation is changing business. The following statement caught my attention."Unskilled workers can then be retrained to handle peripheral jobs in the EDP system such as coding, card punching and so on."Computor Invasion Scares The Unskilled,WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, 1962Times sure have changed. If retraining unskilled workers to code software was a viable option, then they must have been coding some pretty simple software. Maybe "coding" really refers to the process of entering code designed by someone else. Maybe "coding" meant data entry.Regardless of what "coding" meant in 1962, computers and the software we create today are more complex than they were 46 years ago. It is too bad that some who would never think of coding as un
CALL FOR PAPERS: Conference of the Association for Software Testing 2008-01-19 08:04:00 CALL FOR PAPERSThe 3rd Annual Conference of the Association of SoftwareTesting
(CAST) 2008Toronto, Ontario, Canada, July 14-16, 2008Beyond 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 (CAST 2008), to be held July 14-16. The meeting will be held in Toronto, Canada, a city which features enormous diversity in culture, businesses, educational institutions, and the arts. Toronto is the perfect location for a conference on this year’s theme: "Beyond the Boundaries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Software Testing". Interdisciplinary approaches draw from diversified branches of learning or practice, such that insights can be drawn upon a
Evidence That Quality Has Everything To Do With Value 2008-01-15 00:54:00 “Quality
is value to some person.”Gerald Weinberg,Quality Software Management – Systems ThinkingThis morning, Jason Gorman's blog post title Proof That Value
Has Little To Do With Quality? caught my attention. This title contradicts my definition of Quality. To me, Quality is all about value to stakeholders.Quality is not about implementing the best development practices. Quality is not about writing solid code. Quality may not be about impressive features. Quality may have no relation to elegance. Quality may not even be reliable. Quality may be cheap or it may be expensive. Quality may be well planned or it may be haphazard.Quality is all about value. Quality is about value to people that matter.Jason references an interesting article about a web site that started as a le Read more:Evidence
, Everything
Regular Expressions 2008-01-11 11:30:00 (bb|[^b]{2}); [Tt]hat is the \?\. Regular expressions are great tools for testers. I have found them useful for describing GUI objects to GUI test automation tools. I have found them useful for automation results validation. I have found them useful for extracting data I care about from voluminous log files. I've also found them useful for manipulating data.What are regular expressions? Regular expressions are patterns for finding text of interest. They are supported by many test tools, system utilities, text editors, and programming languages.Regular expressions can include the following meta characters to define patterns.^ Matches the beginning$ Matches the end. Matches any single character* Matches zero or more occurrences of the preceding character\ Escape character? Matc Read more:Expressions
A Good Practice 2008-04-04 18:20:00 The Association for Software Testing (AST) is a professional organization dedicated to advancing the understanding and practice of software testing. The AST provides forums for academics, students, and testing practitioners to discuss testing. AST does this through online forums, workshops, education programs, and conferences. The third annual Conference of the Association for Software Testing (CAST) provides a great forum for face-to-face conferring. This is not your typical conference where experts talk at the masses. This is the software testing conference that puts the confer back in conference. Ever sit in a presentation about testing and think anything like the following?Yeah that works for you but it'll never work in my situation.What do you mean by X?She must work with idiots. Read more:Practice
Don't be fooled by the green lights 2008-05-03 14:55:00 If we're uncertain about the reliability and value of code, writing more code seems like a highly fallible and paradoxical way to resolve the uncertainty.- Michael BoltonThere is a disturbing trend in software testing. This is a trend towards redefining test to be code and testing to be a coding activity.In his book, Testing Object Oriented Systems, Robert Binder writes "Manual testing, of course, still plays a role. But testing is mainly about the development of an automated system to implement an application-specific test design." While this book contains a great deal of useful information about test design and test automation, I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement -- and I make a living developing test automation. I find Bob Martin's statements about manual testing being im Read more:fooled
Terrified by Improvisation 2008-05-04 10:12:00 [Improvisation
al comedy] involves people making very sophisticated decisions on the spur of the moment, without benefit of any kind of script or plot. That's what makes it so compelling -- and to be frank -- terrifying. ... What is terrifying about improv is the fact that it appears utterly random and chaotic. It seems as though you have to get up onstage and make everything up, right there on the spot. But the truth is that improv isn't random or chaotic at all. ... Improv is an art form governed by a set of rules... How good people's decisions are under the fast-moving, high-stress conditions of rapid cognition is a function of training, rules, and rehearsal.- Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without ThinkingNow, reread the quote above and replace improv with exploratory te
Aggravation Testing 2008-05-10 06:18:00 An example:How Long Do I Have To Wait?A few hours? I don't have hours. I am sitting in the car using borrowed WiFi from a campground. I had to seek out Internet access to use software that came on a CD. I finally find Internet access and now it says I may have to wait a several hours. Can I abort if it takes longer than I have? What happens if I lose my internet access while the firmware update is underway?I'm already frustrated with this device. I'm already frustrated with the software. I was hoping that a firmware update might fix bugs and usability issues on the device itself. I have reached the tipping point. This thing is going back to the store.
Ben Simo
QuestioningSoftware.com
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Is There A Problem Here? 2008-05-20 18:24:00 msn videoTo use this product, you need to install free softwareThis product requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 with Microsoft Media Players 10 and Macromedia Flash 6 or higher versions, or Mozilla Firefox 1.5 with Macromedia Flash 8, or Safari 2.0.4 with Macromedia Flash 8. To download these free software applications, click the links below and follow the on-screen instructions.Step 1: downloa Read more:Problem
Let's Talk Testing at CAST 2008-06-12 12:54:00 I attended the Conference of the Association for Software Testing
(CAST) last year and discovered something new: a conference that does a great job of mixing presentations by testing thought leaders and practitioners with conferring. CAST is now my favorite testing conference.In addition to learning from expert keynote presenters (including Jerry Weinberg and Cem Kaner), I look forward to time spe
Announcing FROSST 1 - Front Range Open Space Software Testing Conference 2008-07-12 09:14:00 ThinkTalkTest, Ltd., co-founded by Ben Simo and Heidi Harmes-Campbell, is pleased to announce the first FROSST (FrontRange
Open SpaceSoftwareTesting
) conference.FROSST 1 will be held on October 10th and 11th in Westminster, Colorado. The conference will be held on a Friday evening and all day Saturday.The purpose of this conference is to facilitate collaboration amongst software testers in Co Read more:Software Testing
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