Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'

It is not about writing tests, its about writing stories

September 2nd, 2009 · 10 Comments

I would like to make an analogy between building software and building a car. I know it is imperfect one, as one is about design and the other is about manufacturing, but indulge me, the lessons are very similar.
A piece of software is like a car. Lets say you would like to test a car, [...]

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Sharing My Slide Deck from RTAC

August 21st, 2009 · 7 Comments

Just Wanted to share the latest slide deck with you, which I was presenting at RIM Test Automation Conference. I know that without the sound to go with it there is limited value, but I hope you get at least something out of it.
Psychology of Testing

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Super Fast JS Testing

August 12th, 2009 · 10 Comments

by Shyam Seshadri
Before I jump into how exactly you can perform super fast and easy JS testing, let me give you some background on the problem.
Javascript is a finicky language (Some people even hesitate to call it a language). And it can easily grow and become a horrible and complicated beast, incapable of being tamed [...]

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How to think about OO

July 31st, 2009 · 42 Comments

Everyone seems  to think that they are writing OO after all they are using OO languages such as Java, Python or Ruby. But if you exam the code it is often procedural in nature.
Static Methods
Static methods are procedural in nature and they have no place in OO world. I can already hear the screams, so [...]

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Software Testing Categorization

July 14th, 2009 · 14 Comments

You hear people talking about small/medium/large/unit/integration/functional/scenario tests but do most of us really know what is meant by that? Here is how I think about tests.
Unit/Small
Lets start with unit test. The best definition I can find is that it is a test which runs super-fast (under 1 ms) and when it fails you don’t need [...]

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Computer Engineer vs. Computer Scientist

July 11th, 2009 · 32 Comments

Which one are you? I am an engineer. But maybe we should first define the differences between the two. Engineer cares about how the system is put together whereas CS cares about how it works. Do you care about the technology or the algorithm?
The Interview
Since I am on engineer, these are the kind of questions [...]

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Why are we embarrassed to admit that we don’t know how to write tests?

July 7th, 2009 · 17 Comments

Take your average developer and ask “do you know language/technology X?” None of us will feel any shame in admitting that we do not know X. After all there are so many languages, frameworks and technologies, how could you know them all? But what if X is writing testable code? Somehow we have trouble answering [...]

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ActiveRecord is hard to test

June 29th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Reader asks:
have a question regarding testing of Active Record style domain models
The problem is: client code of these objects will instantiate them directly, modify some attributes and then invoke a save(), or insert() method directly on the object. Writing a unit test that doesnt talk to the database is difficult since the save/insert methods are [...]

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What Pair-Programing is Not

June 12th, 2009 · 37 Comments

People often ask how can I justify two people when one will do. Will this not, just double my cost? To answer this question I think it is important to discuss what pair-programing is not.
How much of your time do you spend writing code? If you answer 100% than you are lying! Between checking your [...]

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Yet Another JavaScript Testing Framework

May 22nd, 2009 · 34 Comments

by Miško Hevery & Jeremie Lenfant-engelmann
Did you notice that there are a lot of JavaScript testing frameworks out there? Why has the JavaScript community not consolidated on a single JavaScript framework the way Java has on JUnit. My feeling is that all of these frameworks are good at something but none solve the complete package. Here is [...]

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