What you’re saying in a commit without tests
A corollary to last week’s post: A commit without a test can effectively be read as “It would be okay if somebody undid this, even unintentionally.” Sometimes that’s actually what you want; it might be inconsequential or a rapidly changing aspect or some internal implementation detail. You might be saying “this doesn’t directly impact the… Read more
Tests encode knowledge
I like collecting these little adages about testing. I didn’t come up with this one, but was reminded of it by a tweet yesterday: Lots of people (including myself) chimed in about having done this themselves in the replies. She eventually attributed the idea to Paul Grizzaffi. It’s not explicitly saying “tests encode knowledge”, but… Read more
Emergent complexity from simple specs with Hive
Even the simplest specifications, when combined, can give rise to complex behavior and unexpected edge cases. This is the mechanic that both makes testers’ work challenging and board games fun. The game Hive is a great example of this (I recommend the pocket edition). It seemed like a fun exercise to look at each piece,… Read more
One weekend as a #1x front-end developer
Gerg.dev has a new design! I spent the better part of this weekend writing a WordPress theme (mostly) from the ground up. As a tester dabbling in front-end development, here are some things I reflected on during this mini project. I’m a #1xEngineer This weekend, the #1xEngineer hashtag was all over my feed, as a… Read more
Is “QA” too narrow?
Twice this week, with different people, I had a conversation about what to call the category of work that I’ve been focusing on lately around integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines and making releases as smooth and easy as possible. As part of the discussions, I floated the idea of it all being under the… Read more