I've been pairing with Andy Palmer over this last week. I have to say it's been a lot of fun... and I think we've learned a lot from the experience. One of the things I learned from Andy this week was an innovative use of Hungarian notation for interfaces... Andy told me about Udi Dahan's presentation on intentions and interfaces (PDF)

In Finland, there is a religious annual that comes out (obviously) every year, collecting 12 monthly magazines into a bound volume. The 116th edition of Vartija was printed in 2004 with the theme, “Doctrines Challenged by the Faith of Common Man”. I guess most Finnish libraries stock it, and Finns are regular readers borrowing 3 books every 2 months. If we have faith in common man, we can presume that they also return them. Unless their great grandchildren return them a little overdue….

When doing Acceptance Test Driven Development, one of the things that people find hard to understand at first is the nature of an acceptance test.

In the process of teaching it over the last few days, combined with my own experience and some of the discussions during the Agile Alliance Test Tools workshop I've found another way of helping people to understand how to write 'good' acceptance tests.

The American Homeland Security megadepartment has been in the news recently, covering a whole taxonomy of bug types, relating to people seen as unwelcome visitors and unwelcome visitors seen as raindrops! Firstly, we have the sad story of honest Debbie Williams Arthur who tried to renew her Virginia driver’s license over the net, only to have it rejected with a message saying her car stickers had to be picked up in person. Her husband went to pick them up, only to be told it had to be Debbie, and she had to call a toll free number in the meantime. When she rang the number she was told that Homeland Security had identified her as a fugitive called Debbie K Williams from another part of the U.S, and to bring her ID in to the office. When she got there, they said the problem would be fixed in 15 minutes, then she was told after an hour there were complications. These included the fact that the system didn’t think she existed and the Homeland Security override would not allow her records to be set up. After 3 ½ hours she left, after being advised to walk home because any police check would result in her arrest as a fugitive! She ended up with a hand written note (!) for the police in case she was stopped. Despite being told the issue would be fixed and she’d be given phone updates, none came. Finally after another visit to the office, she got her car stickers (at which point she probably was a fugitive driving with expired car stickers!). This is a production bug, relating to data. The system as a whole works, but missing data and locks on the existing data from the external homeland security system presumably needed software fixes to rectify the bug.

December Issue of the Association for Software Testing Newsletter Now Available

In Australia, the new tax year starts in July, so there are many sales on at the moment. I found some CDs at one place at a throwaway price, $2 each. One of them is an interesting instrumental album by an artist I hadn’t heard of, Tino Izzo. There is one track I have an issue with, called a samba, but it is too slow and fails all "samba" requirements, but does pass "flamenco" muster. Artistic licence, I guess.

I did a web search for reviews of the album, and found a glowing “must buy” review here at the artist’s web site. So based on the heuristic of artists reviews at their sites will be positive, I find it holds, it is positively glowing. It’s written by a specialist in guitar music, who mentions several artists that I have never heard of. I'm not sure how deep his knowledge is though; one rocking track he highlights for "flamenco flair" has no Spanish styled classical guitar at all (just some bongos). The track is an old Beatles ballad, in a new uptempo context and great new arrangement. So that's one issue I have with an otherwise good review. I did find some flamenco flair on another rocking track (4). A good heuristic for Spanish styling is a Spanish track name! Maybe the reviewer's memory failed him. There's even a track for that, "Elusive Memories", also dedicated to testing too fast and not quite remembering how you caused that big bug...

I found another album review which is the most unusual one I have ever read. It was definitely not what I expected. The reviewer starts off discussing people’s reactions to types of music, then her dislike of this type of music, then finishes off by saying she is unfair and unreasonable, before mentioning the artist and album names already listed at the start. Oh, there is a picture of the album art. So there is not one word of actual review. The crazy thing is, she thinks it is new age, when a lot of it is rock, so if she’d only listened to it….. So as a review for me, showstopper, complete failure. As an opinion piece, it is quite well written (but completely wrong to most people interested in the style of music).

This is effectively an equivalence class review: I dislike all the music of which this album is a sample, here’s why I dislike it, and I’m sorry. So as an acceptance tester, why was she chosen for the review? Why didn’t she even listen to it? As a customer, if I am interested in the album, her review has no value at all. Even worse, if I read her review, and buy it because I love that type of music, I might feel robbed when I heard the screaming gutar solos. Ah, I see, reuse. This can now become a generic review of all similar albums. Very clever. Reuse of the completely useless.. [grin]

On the music side, I was also able to apply an album buyers heuristic. The first and last tracks are the best! Those edge conditions aren't just useful in testing....