Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

I have had “A Mind At Play” by Jimmy Sonni and Rob Goodman sitting on my shelf for a while now, waiting patiently with a bookmark on page 219 for me to revisit for reflection. This is the section of the book that describes Claude Shannon’s 6 Strategies for Creative Thinking.

TLDR; Negativity tends to bias processes towards the status quo. Negative feedback causes system to change. Change is how we improve.

TLDR; Testing does not make things look good, it makes things look the way they are. At which point we can improve, and then look better.

TLDR; Quality Assurance is a process. It is not a role. Roles have responsibilities, and we all have a responsibility for quality. People don’t DO quality.

Security Testing is a highly technical set of skills, covering a wide domain of knowledge that can take a long time to learn and gain proficiency. But there are simple ways to increase the scope of what we already do to provide more insight into the security of our application.

TLDR; If you are lucky enough to already be working in testing, and want to learn to automate, then I recommend gradually automating to add value in your existing work. Focus on a few tools and approaches that add value to you. Then build on that.

TLDR; JUnit is an execution framework. The principles of TDD are about writing code, seeing it fail, writing code to make it pass, seeing it pass and making it better. All applies when writing automated execution code for Testing

TLDR; Do you test with individuality? Do you release work that reveals and harnesses your creativity? You can. Take heart from people like Stafford Beer, Charles Dodgson, Buckminster Fuller, William Blake and more. “I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create”

TLDR; People seem to be nervous about releasing code to Github in case it isn’t good enough, or it reflects badly on them. I release code that I created that I found useful. Over time it leaves a trail of code that builds into a portfolio. If I judged it, I would leave no trail. Release. Build a portfolio.

Sometimes we ask for something, without really understanding what that means. Asking for collaboration opens more options.