Hiccupps

I'm in a Scheme  study group run by  one of our developers  and based on Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs , a classic computer science textbook. This week, chatting about our homework opened up a Java discussion, specifically the way that a particular library class makes it easy to have code fail at run time rather than compile time. One developer said that the documentation made it clear how the class should be used so this was fine. The other developers were shocked that this was considered an acceptable defence. That's right: the developers said that, where the software enables the wrong thing, even though somewhere there is doc explaining the potential consequence of the wrong thing, expecting the users to do the right thing was unacceptable . Yes, really. We all laughed at the time but I've hardly stopped chuckling since. Image: Wikipedia

So sometimes I'm a consumer . I like to think a reasonably savvy consumer, but a consumer nonetheless. And when something that I have paid for and depend on doesn't work, as a consumer, I don't like it.  Not just that, I actively resent it. Time I spend making it work is time I am not spending on something of more value to me. I already paid for that thing. It should work. But the intellectual challenge of finding the solution? Means nothing. But the sense of achievement when it's resolved? Don't give me that. I've no time for it. I'm all about how now I can get on with what I have to do, and with the backlog of stuff I didn't do because I was fixing that thing that I already paid for, and the new backlog that's building up while I deal with the old backlog, because of that thing that I depend on, that should just work. So an unreasonable consumer? Not from my point of view. As a consumer, I recently encountered a Windows 8.1 update issu...

This has so many parallels to the way I like to make it possible for interested parties to follow testing progress: Open notebook science is the practice of making the entire primary record of a research project publicly available online as it is recorded.This involves placing the personal, or laboratory, notebook of the researcher online along with all raw and processed data, and any associated material, as this material is generated. The approach may be summed up by the slogan 'no insider information'. Image: https://flic.kr/p/bhEfBg  

Display caption:  Any resemblance to software development activities, living or dead, is purely coincidental. [Fade from black to bright sunshine.] The Test Manager was out of the office looking after his kids at half term. They were on what they called an adventure walk where he'd made a list of stuff for them to find on the stroll down to the river for a picnic. Their favourite on this journey was the window of wheels which they worked out in the end was a bike shop. (No, really, they actually asked for this.) When he returned to work the following week, nominally refreshed, the Test Manager found a jumper neatly folded and smelling freshly laundered on his desk. Tester 1, who sits behind him, said that BD, a member of the BizDev team, had left it there for him. The Test Manager was flattered. It was a tracksuit top affair, snazzy, and just the kind of thing he'd like. BD was quite a sporty chap and bigger than him, so perhaps it had got a bit tight and BD, ...