Posted in
Software Engineering
Monday, October 30, 2006
Shamelessly ripped from my brother Kevin and in time for Halloween is the creepy quiz, Serial Killer or Computer Language Inventor?. I scored a 4 out of 10!
Posted in
Software Engineering
Thursday, October 26, 2006
This weekend is Daylight Savings Time. As I learned in college the “Spring forward, Fall back” policy means that we all get an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning. It came as a shock when I learned that Congress recently legislated that Daylight Savings Time will start weeks later next year. This potentially means that millions of dollars will be spent before March on updating computers — from embedded system in elevators to the servers that power large online stores — to comply with the new time zone rules. Sleep well Sunday!
Posted in
Politics, Software Engineering
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Noam Chomsky is not a genius. Further proof? A crackpot dictator promoted one of his books on the floor of the United Nations.
Read Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct instead. He makes the case that language is an instinct breed into humans after years of evolution. This contradicts Chomsky’s assertion that language is innate and the same for all humans where differences in languages are accounted for by tweaks to a small set of parameters.
I tend to subscribe to Pinker’s theory. Also, reading Pinker won’t make you puke.
Posted in
Software Engineering, Technology
Saturday, April 1, 2006
Security testing is more than doing a port scan. Read the bug reports for the operating system and development software. Are you vulnerable to cross-scripting scripting? http request smuggling? Think about the people involved in operating and maintaining the software. Are they vulnerable to social engineering? Secure design documents. Shred anything that you don’t plan to archive and that contains proprietary information about your software.
This concludes the week of testing topics. Do not be shy to tell me what you think.
Posted in
Software Engineering, Technology
Friday, March 31, 2006
Operational validation testing, or assessment testing, is testing that occurs on the operational system. Often the other testing is done with old (but known) data. Operational testing occurs with current, live data. Sometimes the users change their behavior and send data in a new and unexpected way. It is important to test that software handles live data correctly.
Testing week concludes tomorrow with the topic of security testing.
Posted in
Software Engineering, Technology
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Performance testing, or load testing, investigates how well your software system performs under load. Your software may behave differently when there is one user and when there are fifty simultaneous users. I am loath to admit that I worked on a system that locked up when there were five simultaneous users. Hey, it wasn’t my design!
The point is that some errors only manifest themselves when a load is applied to the system. This testing finds things such as deadlock, memory leaks and invalid use of such things as shared memory, semaphores and threads. Any change that could adversely affect performance should be tested.
This week of testing topics continues tomorrow with my discussion of operational validation testing. Don’t miss it!
Posted in
Software Engineering, Technology
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Verification testing, or requirements testing, is testing to make sure the software meets the project’s requirements. This testing is usually done by a third party, i.e. not the developer. Many companies have a dedicated test team for this function.
If you work with an independent tester, be sure to make them a part of the project from the being. This includes design meetings. Their job is to look at the requirements and figure out how to test them. Take the time to explain your design and development to your test engineer. Do not focus so much on the coding that you neglect your team.
Speaking of requirements, the only hurricanes New Orleans requires are the mixed drinks. Don’t ya think?
Tomorrow I plan to discuss performance testing.
