Better Software - April 2008 - (Page 8)

Editor’s Pick test Your Pepper One day, I made myself a salad for lunch. But it wasn’t just any salad. It was a special salad. I’m not anti-vegetables by any means, but I tend to make pretty boring salads at home. They typically comprise spinach leaves, sliced carrots, and a bit of dressing. But then I was struck, whilst walking the aisles of my local supermarket, with the notion that I like salads and I like peppers, so I’d probably like peppers on a salad. That’s called logic, folks. So I tested my logic by slicing one of the long, skinny green peppers and one of the short, wrinkly orange peppers (don’t bother me with pepper names!) and putting the various pieces onto my salad. I took my salad back to my workspace and continued editing a Better Software article while chomping away at my greens. Only then did it occur to me that two whole peppers might have been too much for my meager salad. By then, of course, I was quite a few bites in. Don’t get me wrong—I love peppers, and I love spicy food. I just like to know it’s coming. My colleague Francesca, the editor of StickyMinds.com, has written about her own experiences with peppers in the StickyLetter Our Take “Pickled Pepper Predicament,” and I’m sure I don’t need to go into great detail about the wonderful powers of capsaicin. I will merely say that I learned a very important lesson that day about the production of salads with fresh peppers. Test Your Pepper. Do not release your application salad for public consumption without first testing its various elements peppers. You may find that it has lots of extra code peppers or vicious bugs pepper seeds—and it may be too late. And no matter what, don’t pretend afterward that a bug pepper is a feature of the software salad. No one will sympathize and your customer’s mouth will still be irate on fire. To read Francesca Matteu’s “Pickled Pepper Predicament,” visit www.stickyMinds.com/editorspick10-3 Joseph McAllister Managing Editor, SQE Multimedia jmcallister@sqe.com Quotables “One should insist on having committed and competent customers onboard from the start of the project. Sadly, this isn’t as straightforward as making sure the fish get off the boat and into the factory as quickly as possible. ” Clarke Ching, “Don’t let the engine run out of fuel” www.stickyminds.com/quotables10-3a “When my phone recently started spontaneously turning itself off and I repeatedly turned it on without thinking once about not pushing past the defects and taking it to get repaired, it hit me that I had been trained by the flaws of the tools to accept the defects. ” holly Bourquin, “Desensitizing ourselves for Disaster” www.stickyminds.com/quotables10-3b “It’s true that we have tremendous processing power, but we seem to be using up all of it all the time. These days, we are able to do a pretty good analysis and test generation for a class in about one minute on average … ten years ago it would’ve taken a full day. ” alBerto savoia, gray Matters interview www.stickyminds.com/quotables10-3c systems and software aren’t just about correctness; they’re also about solving problems for people. one principle of the context-driven software testing movement says that if the problem isn’t solved, the product doesn’t work. 8 BETTER SOFTWARE APRIL 2008 www.StickyMinds.com http://www.StickyMinds.com http://www.stickyminds.com/quotables10-3a http://www.stickyminds.com/quotables10-3b http://www.stickyminds.com/quotables10-3c http://www.StickyMinds.com/editorspick10-3 http://www.StickyMinds.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software - April 2008

Better Software - April 2008 Contents Mark Your Calendar Contributions eLightenment Technology Speaking - A Change Would Do You Good Code Craft - A "D" In Programming, Part 1 Test Connection - Learning the Hardware Lessons Management Chronicles - The Art of Persuading Management Cover Story - Incremental and Iterative Development Developers...Start Your Engines Where Do I Go From Here Product Announcements 10 Things You Might Not Know About... The Last Word - Software Quality and the Prisoner's Dilemma Ad Index

Better Software - April 2008

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