Shmuel's Software Stuff

Things to share about Software Testing

Archive for category Test Insight

BotT: Linus' bug, youtube no workee!

Oct 9

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Bug of this Time, Test Insight | 2 Comments

Hi everybody!

The last BotT (Bug of this time) was long ago, when we talked about testing and the Excel bug.
So now we’ve got a cool one, on which the most notable point is not the bug, is the submitter :).

Bug 439858 on Fedora (a Linux distribution) was (supposedly) submitted by Linus Torvalds himself. He started the Linux wave on August 91, and is still posting bugs on March 08 – you gotta admire him.
I am aware that the submitter signing “Linus Torvalds” may not be Linus. It actually doesn’t matter, let’s just pretend it is for sensationalism’s sake (regarding the admiration, you still gotta admire him even if the bug’s not his 😉).

Let’s try to analyze the bug report, and the bug itself, to see what we can learn:

Read the rest of this entry »

SIGiST Conference, my lecture on Fuzz and Fault Injection

Aug 30

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Test Insight | 1 Comment

In this year I held a session on the “SIGiST Israel” conference.
It was a one hour lecture introducing advanced techniques, with examples of software testing through Fault Injection (with HEAT tools) and through Fuzz (variety of free tools). This month I received the average grade from the feedback sheets: 97/100!
Of course, I’m happy with the results. 🙂 Thanks to all who attended and asked questions.

It is possible that I’ll post here a transcript or some text about this lecture. One option may be to add my comments from the lecture as notes in the powerpoint slides and post the slides here. But I don’t like powerpoint much as it does a poor job of passing information (it takes the written word and limits it into bad format and structure).
Finding the time, I’ll write the lecture in extense text.

In order to keep this post still useful, here goes a short summary of the talk:

How to break software Read the rest of this entry »

5 things I learned at SIGiST Conference, day 1

Jun 24

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Test Annotations, Test Insight | 1 Comment

Annotations from day 24/06/2008 of the Sigist conference on Software Testing.

Sigist Israel logoWhen not from a lecture focus, then from a side comment or explanation. Below you’ll find some insights I gained from today’s lecture. When not from a lecture focus, the ideas come from a side comment or explanation:

Read the rest of this entry »

Testers don't think like Developers think like Computers

Jun 16

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Nerd T35t1ng, Test Annotations, Test Insight | 4 Comments

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”.

Dreaming in Code

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Set the butterflies free – now I am collecting quotes

Jun 8

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Nerd T35t1ng, Personal, Test Annotations | Comments off

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.

BotT: Excel 2007 has algebra difficulties…

May 4

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Bug of this Time, Nerd T35t1ng, Test Insight | 1 Comment

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). Read the rest of this entry »

Three texts that changed my (testing) life

Dec 19

Posted by Shmuel Gershon in Test Insight | 1 Comment

I was once talking with a friend about automation and when it should be done. I commented with him about the excellent “When Should a Test Be Automated?” paper by Brian Marick, and told him that “this is one of the three texts that changed my testing life“. I was surprised at the fact these three texts were already categorized as such in my head, and at the promptness I could think of them, at the spot.

So I want to share with you these articles, with a bit of background on them, and hyperlinks wherever I can find them. They are presented in the (chronologic) order they came to my attention.

Read the rest of this entry »