Testing - Jennifer++

Jennifer++

Testing

All the ways we're bad at testing software. Sometimes I even have ideas how to improve.

Designing for Testability

Designing for Testability

The same factors that make your software hard to test will also make it hard to maintain. By adding tests, you can find and fix those things, and so the simple fact of having tests will make your software projects more successful.

Maybe don't use StringBuilder

Maybe don't use StringBuilder

So, should you use StringBuilder? Yes, sometimes. It depends on what your data is like, and what you're optimizing for.

Unit Testing: How do I even?

Unit Testing: How do I even?

It hopefully seems obvious that you should test your software. And in particular that you should unit test your software. But, why? And, how? For some reason no one seems to teach this.

Process Featured

Measuring Risk

A while back, I was in a planning meeting where a whole development organization was trying to squeeze a huge and non-negotiable volume of work into a predetermined and non-negotiable release schedule. It was basically the antithesis of everything I ever advocate for. I was mostly trying not to just

Software Engineer

Process Featured

Software Engineer

I am a software engineer. What I'm not is a programmer, or a developer, or a coder, or a ninja. Simply writing code is the easiest part of developing software. Anyone can write a competent for loop given a day or two of training. The difference between that and engineering

A Bug's Life

I've written before about useful metrics for software development organizations, and it's past time for another. The metric I'm proposing now, I call "A Bug's Life". Because who doesn't like Pixar? And it's descriptive. What is this The basic idea is to track how long it takes a defect to

Require-with

Require-with is a project I've recently been working on. The main purpose of the module is to enable simple dependency injection in Node.js. Dependency injection can be great for a number of purposes. The two that come most immediately to mind are testing, and experimentation. Dependency injection For just

Software development metrics

Software development is a skill. And for the moment, I mean that in an institutional sense. It's a skill the organization has. It's something that an organization can be good at. And it's something that an organization can become better at, with practice. All too often though, development organizations don't

Testing needs a better vocabulary

If you build or test software, you've almost certainly seen some variant of the Test Pyramid. The basic concept it's trying to communicate is sound, and that is: focus your testing resources on the kinds of tests that provide the most value. And specifically that means focus primarily on unit

Software Engineer in Test

Update: I'm actually a Sofware Engineer now. But everything else holds up. I'm a software engineer, working mostly to support testing other software. I don't work at Google, but if I did, my job title would most likely be Software Engineer in Test (SET). At Microsoft or Amazon, it would