|
Software developers need testers to be their shield in the fight against software defects. QA professionals want programmers to know how to strengthen this alliance. At least the ones that can be put into print
I'm sure there are a few "bluer" items out there
|
|
|
|
|
Kent Sharkey wrote: QA professionals want programmers to know how to strengthen this alliance.
Communication is a two directions process. If one of them is broken, it brings nothing.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
Oh, for God's sake!
If you want devs to help you out, don't, for crying out loud, try to use logical arguments or facts -- most devs subscribe to one or more "alternative logics" based on "different facts", so it's a lost battle before it begins.
Just tell them that you need them to be your Mighty, Shining Guardian, equipped with their Mithril Sword of (insert programming language name here), and Legendary Shield of Infinite Knowledge.
They'll be eating out of your hand.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
By contrast there's only two things I wished testers knew.
1) if you find a bug raise a ticket for it, don't come and interrupt me every time you find a bug to tell me....you are not going to get a cookie
2) If you can't give me reproduction steps, don't raise a ticket.
|
|
|
|
|
And if you still come to me, ignoring #1 and #2...
3) Explain it without ambiguities in a way I can understand it.
4) Don't flip out if I start asking questions to delimitate the scope and to be sure I have understand understood you correctly.
EDIT: 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 27-Feb-20 13:13pm.
|
|
|
|
|
F-ES Sitecore wrote: 2) If you can't give me reproduction steps, don't raise a ticket.
So you say: Completely ignore heisenbugs, POM-errors, race conditions ... all sorts of intermittent errors. You don't want to hear about them. You don't want to log them. You don't want to spend any time on trying to see if you can reproduce them (e.g. by overloading the system to create more resource conflicts). Those problems are not real. You do not want to even consider them.
If a test fails one of a thousand runs, you say: Forget it! If one of a hundred runs fails: Forget it! If one of ten runs fails: Forget it! You can't reliably reproduce it, so forget it! Where do you draw the line? What if every second run, on the average but not consistently, fails?
So I do not agree with your second point. I'd rather say: "If you can't give me reproduction steps, don't take for granted that I will have it fixed, neither tomorrow, in a week or in a year. But please: If it happens again, report it again, with as many details as possible, and we will try to see if there is some recurring patteren in all the reports of this problem".
|
|
|
|
|
Member 7989122 wrote: So you say: Completely ignore heisenbugs, POM-errors, race conditions ... all sorts of intermittent errors. You don't want to hear about them. You don't want to log them. You don't want to spend any time on trying to see if you can reproduce them
Did I stutter? 
Obviously I was talking about bugs that are easily reproducible, like "certain email addresses fail validation" - which addresses? "I loaded an image and it broke the layout" - which image? I entered an invalid age and it didn't work - which age? "I clicked on a link and got a 404" - which link?
Seriously, the garbage you get on tickets from testers. I find almost all testers have zero knowledge of their own job. Which is understandable as no-one gets a degree in testing, no-one goes on a testing course, no programmer wants to make the switch to tester, so you usually just get a bunch of chancers.
IMHE.
|
|
|
|
|
I'd like to add another point which is slightly on the side - the problem is not with the testers, but with advanced users:
3) Please don't make workarounds for a bug/problem without informing me! Let me know of all bugs!
I guess this is mostly a problem with technically advanced users, in particular in my situation, when I was developing some tools for strictly in-house use. Several times I discovered bugs that should have caused problems for the projects using that functionality, but I hadn't heard a word about it. So I visit that project team, to learn why the bug didn't manifiest itself with them. Oh, sure, that bug had always been there, but if we do this and that little trick, we can work around the bug! But you haven't reported it to me! Shrugs. Why should we? This workaround was good enough for us...
In one case, a project group had had a workaround for two years, until another project started using the same functionality, but unaware of the workaround. In such cases, I must fight to keep a polite, friendly image, hiding my anger (towards the first project group, not the second). We are working in the same company, in the same building, on the same floor. Yet you think it is too much "bother" to raise a ticket, or drop me an email, or mention it in passing in the coffee corner? Is that how we keep up the quality of our tools? Is that how we relate to other projects - keeping secret that something doesn't work as it should, letting the other group fight with the bugs?
Bug handling is not an arena for glossing over and excessive politeness. I would much rather that someone comes to scream in my face than that they let my bug live on in the code. Screaming is less insulting than secretly saying: "We will preserve his faults and mistakes, we'll let them prevail!" I see that as a sort of mild form of slandering. Please don't be "kind" to me - tell me what is wrong, so that I get a chance to correct it!
|
|
|
|
|
F-ES Sitecore wrote: 2) If you can't give me reproduction steps, don't raise a ticket.
Reminds me of a ticket written long ago: "During the night, the following logs came out."
The fix was "Turn off printer."
|
|
|
|
|
For the first time, scientists have engineered and switched on a working neural net that allows biological and silicon-based artificial brain cells to communicate back and forth. And the quality of discourse on the internet increases
At least better than most of Twitter, anyway.
It is kind of a mind-boggling development though.
Possibly literally.
|
|
|
|
|
I said the other day that I like the quote "What today is written as science-fiction, might tomorrow be read as a reportage in a newspaper"
And there are many, many really good books with very plausible outcomes in this topic (and others related to this forum) and most of them don't end good for us.
But instead of slowing down and think more before giving a step, we still try it even harder in our arrogance.
What can go wrong?
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 27-Feb-20 13:16pm.
|
|
|
|
|
Communication isn't the big problem; it's just getting ones and zeroes to transfer. The bigger problem is accessing the network, because hardware implants will not be popular (or trusted, most likely), despite lots of people saying they'd like that kind of thing -- and after the first few people to go through the (BRAIN!) surgery discover that they might have to have (BRAIN!) surgery lots more times, because microsoul forgot to add a feature or to close a security hole, the allure will reduce even further.
Magno-whatzit headsets? Forget it. They won't get used.
I postulated back in the '80s that plants (as in house plants) wouldn't complain about having bits and bobs of tech inserted (or grown) into them, and are sensitive to atmospheric chemicals (a trait that can be augmented/modified), so the heavy network work could be handled by your aspidistra in the corner, while all you have to do is smell funny (which most people can manage, even without non-intrusive modification).
It never caught on, though, because the tech wasn't available to do, well, any of it at all, not even the smallest part of it.
I hate it when people tell me "We can't do it!"; I much prefer "We're working on it!"
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
Here is our annual list of technological advances that we believe will make a real difference in solving important problems. "Break on through to the other side"
|
|
|
|
|
"Unhackable internet"
But is that really the issue? There may be some high tech hackers who tap into the backbones or even the last mile, but phishing seems much easier and more productive.
|
|
|
|
|
Joe Woodbury wrote: but phishing seems much easier and more productive.
Yes, I agree with you.
The weakest part of the security chain in technology is mostly the same... the person using it.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
Absolutely.
It's only "researchers" and the US government who do any actual hacking; everything else is phishing bait.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
Believe it or not, Microsoft is readying its Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection for Linux servers. Yes, you read that right: Linux servers. I'm sure all those Linux users will love to install software from Microsoft
|
|
|
|
|
I'm holding out for facebook security services.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
Mark_Wallace wrote: I'm holding out for facebook security services.
I think they would try really hard to do a good product. After all, they do want to secure your data as much as possible, so they are the only ones having access to it and this is good for their business.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
So it will be secure from everyone but them and those whom they sell it to (i.e. anyone and everyone)?
Privacy doesn't get more private than that.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
We were speaking about security, not privacy  
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
A study of the re-use of code from over twenty thousand Java projects on GitHub discovered that almost 30% of them might be involved in potential code borrowing and almost 10% of them could potentially violate original licenses. I was going to give it back!
|
|
|
|
|
So how does this affect my plan to put every permutation of every possible line of code on a hard drive, and release it into the public domain?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
|
|
|
|
|
Kent Sharkey wrote: almost 30% of them might be involved in potential code borrowing and almost 10% of them could potentially violate original licenses.
Only? 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
Google's TCMalloc can be used as a replacement for C and C++ default memory allocators to provide greater efficiency at scale and better support for parallelism, says Google. Does it automatically insert ads into your heap?
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
