Category Archives: Software Craft

Software Craft

Software Craft

The best programming language

6 Comments

Since it was shortly before Christmas, I put a wish on twitter last week:

Anyone who wants to give me a gift for x-mas, consider writing a programming language where “if (* == true)” results in a compiler error.

This inspired some ideas on the twittersphere, and I decided to bring this topic to the Hamburg Software Craftsmanship user group on last Tuesday. Here’s what we brainstormed together: The best programming language, ever.

IMG_1228

I need to elaborate a bit on some of them.

Disclaimer: Don’t hate me, I’m just a messenger.

Continue reading The best programming language →
Agile Testing, Methodologies, Scrum, Software Craft, Testing, XP

7 Zero-order measurements for agile projects

3 Comments

About two years ago I read Quality Software Management Volume 2 – First-order measurement from Jerry Weinberg. In it, he explains the differences between first-order and second-order measurements. The latter is a replacement measurement. Instead of measuring the thing, we measure something that we substitute for the thing that we are measuring. For example, measuring code coverage usually is a second-order measurement for test quality. It does not really measure the quality of the underlying tests, since you don’t know how many assertions lie behind the covered lines of code. In the same book, Weinberg also provides the concept of zero-order measurements for projects. A few months ago I was surprised that these seem to be focused on traditional projects, rather than agile ones. Since then I decided to come up with zero-order measurements for agile projects. So, here are some of the things I look for when entering a new client or company.

Continue reading 7 Zero-order measurements for agile projects →
Agile Testing, Software Craft, Test Driven Development

Testautomation Coderetreat No. 1 – A report

3 Comments

Last Saturday we had the first testautomation coderetreat in Munich. Woohoo! This was a kickstart for this new coderetreat format – besides the original one from Corey Haines, and the Legacy Coderetreat format from J.B. Rainsberger. Here is my report from the facilitator’s point of view and with some hints about what I am going to try at different other follow-up coderetreats.

Continue reading Testautomation Coderetreat No. 1 – A report →
Agile Testing, Software Craft

Testautomation Coderetreat postponed

Leave a comment

If you have followed this blog long enough, then you might have crossed the Testautomation Coderetreat in Munich which we planned for June 2nd. I apologize for having to cancel the first meeting on such a short notice, but we found it unprofessional to stick to the date. Here is the reason we had to postpone this date:

While this might mean, that I will have to do lots of other duties in the next few weeks – well, at least my priorities will change a bit – we also planned in a replacement for the for the first testautomation coderetreat. The new date is now the 11th of August, again in Munich, Germany. Here is the link to the event on eventbrite, please sign up there: Testautomation Coderetreat Munich.

Agile Testing, Software Craft

Coderetreat goes testautomation

6 Comments

I remember a talk from Cory Foy back at XP 2010 in Trondheim, Norway. He referred to Corey Haines as the happiest guy in the world. Although he lost his job, he started to travel around in the world, from shop to shop, from company to company. He was able to learn so much in a single year that he continued his journeyman tour after that.

One thing that Corey Haines invented alongside is a Coderetreat. Up until the global day of Coderetreat last year on 3rd of December I didn’t know what a Coderetreat actually is. At the core are six sessions of 45 minutes each where you solve a problem in code. Then you delete your code, and do it again – maybe with a different pair partner.

Recently J.B. Rainsberger invented the idea of a Legacy Coderetreat. The idea there is similar to a Coderetreat, but have to deal with legacy code and improve it. I attended one Legacy Coderetreat in the mean time, and it was quite interesting to solve the problem of a big mess of code.

At some point back last year I got in touch with Corey Haines and Adam Goucher. We bounced some ideas back an forth, and I refined them later with Adrian Bolboaca to yield a Coderetreat for testautomation code. Now I am happy to announce the first Testautomation Coderetreat in Munich on June 2nd.

Continue reading Coderetreat goes testautomation →
Software Craft, Test Driven Development

Binary Kata

Leave a comment

There are only 10 types of people in the world:

  • Those who understand binary
  • Those who don’t

How is your binary today?

If you want to become one of the former group, here is a coding kata for you. I derived this from a tester at a client who is currently pursuing his Computer Science degree. While he was asking for help on an exercise, we came up with the idea, that this exercise would be a pleasant coding kata.

Continue reading Binary Kata →
Software Craft, Testing

Alternatives to Apprenticeships

1 Comment

Today I crossed my review comments for the Apprenticeship Patterns which I wrote back in 2009. I wrote a blog entry back at that time about My long road. Reflecting back over the past – maybe – 3 years, I noticed something I wanted to write about: alternatives to apprenticeships – most of them I came across at my current employer it-agile. I remember that we discussed the topic of apprenticeships a few weeks ago at the local software craftsmanship user group meeting in Münster. We found that the apprenticeship model does not fit well into Germany’s working model in the IT industry. So, we tried to come up with alternatives. Here are the ones I have seen implemented at different companies: Mentoring and Peer-Groups.

Continue reading Alternatives to Apprenticeships →
Agile Testing, Context-driven Testing, Software Craft, Testing

8 things you ought to know if you do not know anything about hiring a software tester

12 Comments

In a recent blog entry over at 8thLight’s blog Angelique Martin points out to 8 things you ought to know if you do not know anything about hiring a software developer. Having been involved with the Software Craftsmanship movement since the early days, and 8thLight has played a major role in that movement early on, this list was compelling to me.

In short, Angelique reminds us to ask potential new employees for the development processes they used, their development practices, – particularly TDD, pair programming, short iterations, and continuous integration – and how they educated themselves and kept their claws sharp. She also points out that she would ask for a proof of their talent, how they estimated, how deadlines are met, and what they can say about the costs involved when developing software.

This list was so compelling to that I decided to put up a similar list with the things I was looking out for hiring a software tester. I believe there are some unique skills I would look for in a software tester that I would not necessarily look for in a programmer. So, here it is.

Continue reading 8 things you ought to know if you do not know anything about hiring a software tester →
Context-driven Testing, Exploratory Testing, Leadership, Methodologies, Scrum, Software Craft, Test Driven Development, Testing, XP

Some surveys on the state of our craft

5 Comments

One of my colleagues made a claim yesterday which I would like to put some numbers on. I raised the question on twitter, and received suspicious answers about the numbers of my colleague. Please forward this survey to anyone you know who is programming: http://www.shino.de/programmer-survey/ It consist of just four question, so you should be able to answer them in a few minutes.

Over twitter I also received the feedback that things are worse for testers. I would like to put numbers on that as well. Therefore I also put up an equally small survey for tester: http://www.shino.de/tester-survey/ Please forward this survey to anyone in the software business that you know of.

From time to time to I will publish some of the results. I aim for end of January for the first set of data.