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...It would be really nice if, as an industry, we could stop being such a bunch of screwed-up clowns and start living up to our potential. Ship It! is one of the things that could help, if only tho...
-Mike Gunderloy |
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Do it right from day one or you never will
-Andy Hunt |
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If your shop has trouble shipping quality software on time -- and let's face it, most do -- then this book is for you. If you're a manager, I'd say that doubly so.
-Ernest Friedman-Hill "JavaRanch Sheriff" |
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(Jul 22)
Here's a PDF of the talk. Practical Test Automation.
Update: Here's link to the video, taken with my cell phone using Qik. Practical Test Automation
Category: Agile
(Jul 21)
Just a quick reminder that Southern Fried Agile is Friday, July 22nd in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you're in the region, this will be a great event to catch.
Southern Fried Agile: This is Your Brain on Agile!
Here's the list of speakers:
- Andy Painter
- Bill Krebs
- Cory Foy
- Jared Richardson
- Joe Little
- Ken Pugh
- Mike Cottmeyer
- Mike Cox
- Sara Welch
And the topics include practical test automation (that's my topic), Kanban, an introduction to agile, an introduction to agile planning and project management, and more.
You can find the entire list on the topics page
It's a great event and I hope to see you there!
Category: Agile
(Jul 13)
Quite often (and again very recently) I've run into a simple, but frustrating, misunderstanding. I'll often come to work with a team, evaluate their current state, and chart a path for them to move forward. For many of the teams I encounter, this ends up starting with continuous integration and test automation (along with a few other practices).
And I'm repeatedly finding that some developers, but nearly all managers, assume that I'm focusing on QA, or worse, that I'm in a QA role.
It's not that being equated with QA is bad. It's a compliment if you've known some of the testers I've worked alongside. The problem is with the fundamental misunderstanding about the role of automated testing. Automated testing isn't something you hand off to someone else; it's a function of your job if you're a senior software developer (or ever hope to be).
A sure sign of an immature or prima donna developer is the thought that writing automated tests are beneath them, and that someone else should write those test for them. Having someone else write your tests for you is what I call being a software pooper scooper. You're agreeing to follow someone else around and clean up their mess.
What's that you say? There is no mess? Really? If you think that you, or your team, can write tests with no bugs, then you're deluded. You're simply fooling yourself, but not the people who use your code.
Writing software is difficult. There are so many moving parts and we have to line them all up perfectly. Clicking through by hand isn't cost effective, or especially repeatable. If you want to KNOW that your code runs as you intended for it to run, then wrap it with an automated test. There's a small learning curve, but not much of one. Once you've written a handful, you'll find they take very little time at all to create. In fact, compared to sitting at a keyboard and debugging for an hour or two, you'll find writing an automated test takes no time at all.
And that's when you'll be on the road to being a real senior software developer.
Here are a few links for those of you just getting started:
My Junit tutorial
TDD for Embedded C
An Introduction to GTest
An NUnit Tutorial
Category: Agile
(May 23)
Here in North Carolina, we've got the best government money can buy!
North Carolina governor refuses to block anti-muni broadband law
I usually try to post more than a link, but this is just so disgusting that I'm posting the link and moving on.
Category: Misc
(May 4)
My article on Trench Warfare is in this month's Pragmatic Programmer's free magazine. Check it out and see if you're already working in a "trench shop".
Prag Pub Issue #23
Category: Misc
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