Testing Thoughts

We all are told constantly not to think like a programmers.
We’ve told other people dozens of times “Don’t you think like a programmer. We don’t care why the software does it - it is still wrong”.

For testers, thinking like developers is evil. If you think like a programmer, you’ll start excusing the software and will forgive the system’s bugs.

I am reading the very cool book “Dreaming in Code” by Scott Rosenberg, and I just understood a little bit more on why’s so bad sharing the developers mindset.

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I’ve started a quote collection. Many times I want to quote someone but I just don’t remember how exactly the phrase was. Or remember the quote but am not certain on the source…

I am fond of quoting.
Not sure why, but I like to quote. I guess it gives some legitimating to what I am saying.

So, the quote collection is available at this address: http://testing.gershon.info/quote-collection/. It will grow slowly, please check it regularly.

Do you use MS Office 2007?
Well, then you probably noticed that Excel multiplies “850 x 77.1″ as “100,000″ instead of “65,535″.

Uh, you didn’t notice? Well neither did I until I read it all over the internet.
See the post on SlashDot for scoop, and see its comments for some good laughs.

There are explanations all around about how this bug came to appear in Excel.
The best one is probably Joel’s one (you may remember Joel from this post). (more…)

• Which came first, the chicken or the egg? And after all, why would any of them cross the road?
  That question is as old as time.
• How would you test a program which can return the type of a triangle based on the side widths?
  That question is as old as me.

In 1979 (yes, I am that young ), Glenford J. Myers wrote what was to be the first classic book on Software Testing.
Called “The Art of Software Testing“, this book is very old, and written with old software in mind - most technologies and methodologies existing today were not dreamed of back then.
Well, it turns out the principles of software - from writing it to testing it - are still pretty much the same. Software is still written on sort of punchcards, the punchcards just got more complex and flexible… The book content is surprisingly relevant for today’s testers - so much, that it was updated only once in almost 30 years.
If you haven’t, read the book. Unfortunately, I have read it only partially meanwhile.

Maybe the most known contribution of Mr. Glenford in this book is the testing self-assessment challenge in the introduction.

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Do you FitNesse?

I’ll (as soon as I get to do a lot of things I want to get done) post some impressions and examples on FitNesse, the cool tool for cool testers.

What I plan to do:

1. Install and set a FitNesse setup;
2. Make a simple standard easy program - the System Under Test!
3. Start testing and making the program better with FitNesse.
4. And all this, with screenshot goodness!

When will that be?

• Ouch. It may take a long time. Let’s talk about this again on July…

Meanwhile: “FitNesse is designed to support acceptance testing rather than unit testing in that it facilitates detailed readable description of system function”. More information can be read in FitNesse’s website.