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Articles in category Software development

Gall's law

2015-02-28 · Software development · Thomas Sundberg

I saw a wonderful reference on Twitter the other day. It quoted something called Gall's law.

I looked it up and noticed that this seems to be a valid reference made by Dr. John Gall in a book from 1975.

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Cucumber-JVM Hello world

2014-05-29 · Cucumber Requirements Software development Test automation · Thomas Sundberg

This is the example I showed at the I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2014 in Bucharest. I created it for your convenience so you should be able to implement it yourself after the presentation.

Before we dive into the example, let me just recap what I am aiming for. I will show you how an example (or specification if you want) can be executed. The example is written in plain text and it is used as the basis for an execution. This example can later be relied upon for regression testing as well as living documentation.

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Test automation

2014-01-28 · Software development Test automation · Thomas Sundberg

A lot of people and companies are talking about and thinking of test automation. It seems to be like a holy grail within software development for a lot of people.

I am, however, sometimes wondering if they have thought this through properly. A few questions are important to know the answer to before you start a project that aims to place a product, or a project if you want, under automated testing. It seems to me as if a lot of people haven’t thought enough of the question why or the question what. Focus is often on the question how and almost never on where or when. How is obviously important, but if why and what hasn’t been properly understood then the how is uninteresting. Where is also important to decide upon. Some things should be tested through the final user interface, some things should be tested on the inside of a system. Some things should be tested with unit tests and some things at other levels. Finally, it is important to decide when the tests should be implemented. Tests can be implemented first, last or during the implementation of the system. This may not seem to a big deal, but it turns out that it is.

But let us start with the why.

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All computer systems are equal

2012-10-13 · Software development · Thomas Sundberg

All computer systems are equal, but some systems are more equal than others. At least on a high level.

They are all subject to these actions:

  • Enter data
  • Apply business rules - morph the data
  • Persist
  • Retrieve the transformed data

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Testing a web application with Selenium 2

2011-10-18 · Automation Cucumber Maven Selenium Software development Test automation · Thomas Sundberg

Selenium a great tool for testing web applications. The current version, Selenium 2, is a merge between Selenium and WebDriver. I will walk you through an example where we test a web site using Selenium in a few different ways. This is the same example as I demonstrated at Scandev on tour in Stockholm 18 October 2011.

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Why should you use different technical practises when you develop software?

2011-04-14 · Automation Software craftsmanship Software development · Thomas Sundberg

Why not hack away as usual and hope for the best?

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What is you passion?

2011-03-28 · Software development · Thomas Sundberg

A colleague of mine said a while ago that he used to ask that question to a certified scrum trainer. The trainer always answers that he will have to get back with an answer. One can speculate in why the person who got the question didn't have a good answer ready. The are a few options, either he does what he does because he has a passion for it or because he is good at it and it pays good money.

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