Trophic Taxonomy Of Testing
Written by Jamie Monday, 19 December 2011 09:07
When I was doing my master’s degree in High Performance Computing, we knocked up a predator-prey simulation and connected it to a screen. Each prey was a green square, the predators were red, and I would guess that they were stored in a two-dimensional array, but I can’t actually remember.
Measure of Exploration
Written by Jamie Wednesday, 30 November 2011 08:52
A quick note. Jorrit and I run a very (very!) successful company called Ugly Duckling. We run the company in the same way we help clients run their companies and teams. We use iterations, feedback analysis, have a strong focus on personal development, we set our moral compasses (although that can only ever be based on a personal sense of right and wrong), etc.
Quick Kata
Written by Jamie Monday, 28 November 2011 19:12
I was messing about this morning and came across a Kata by Robert Martin. I am not sure about Katas. On the one hand, they are mechanical, teaching one to follow rules. You may be a black belt in doing Katas, for example, but come to my home town of Hull and that is meaningless in a town full of people who can fight. Katas also defy the heuristic that we should not program by coincidence. But, the Prime Factor Kata does show you how to improve the design of an algorithm and also how to move step-wise through the design space. I also didn’t really understand the algorithm but, after doing it a few times, I now do - it was a cheap and fun way to learn about integer factorisation. I suppose the trick is to do what works for you and don’t be afraid to mix things up. Remember, best practice is dogma, so use your own judgment.
Here’s my example.
Reflection on Software Engineering Metrics
Written by Jorrit Thursday, 27 October 2011 14:04
Yesterday I discussed some ideas on software metrics and statistics with Michael Bolton. He suggested reading the Kaner and Bond (2004) paper on the subject. The paper asks many questions, it gets the reader thinking. It points out, rightfully, that the key question in any data gathering and processing quest is “What are we measuring?”. Although the paper is critical about the effectiveness of metrics, it does offer an example where gathering data proves to be useful:
One of the key release criteria for a project is an acceptably low count of significant, unfixed bugs. It is common, over the course of the project, for testers to find a few bugs at the start (while they're getting oriented), then lots of bugs, then fewer and fewer as the program stabilizes. The pattern is common enough that bug curves—graphs showing how many new bugs were found week by week, or how many bugs are unresolved week by week, or some other weekly variant—are in common use in the field.
-Kaner C., Bond W. (2004)
Problem 8
Written by Jamie Monday, 20 June 2011 14:32
I have just solved problem 8, I think, by cheating. Here it is:Find the greatest product of five consecutive digits in the 1000-digit number.
73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934
96983520312774506326239578318016984801869478851843
85861560789112949495459501737958331952853208805511
12540698747158523863050715693290963295227443043557
66896648950445244523161731856403098711121722383113
62229893423380308135336276614282806444486645238749
30358907296290491560440772390713810515859307960866
70172427121883998797908792274921901699720888093776
65727333001053367881220235421809751254540594752243
52584907711670556013604839586446706324415722155397
53697817977846174064955149290862569321978468622482
83972241375657056057490261407972968652414535100474
82166370484403199890008895243450658541227588666881
16427171479924442928230863465674813919123162824586
17866458359124566529476545682848912883142607690042
24219022671055626321111109370544217506941658960408
07198403850962455444362981230987879927244284909188
84580156166097919133875499200524063689912560717606
05886116467109405077541002256983155200055935729725
71636269561882670428252483600823257530420752963450
73167176531330624919225119674426574742355349194934
96983520312774506326239578318016984801869478851843
85861560789112949495459501737958331952853208805511
12540698747158523863050715693290963295227443043557
66896648950445244523161731856403098711121722383113
62229893423380308135336276614282806444486645238749
30358907296290491560440772390713810515859307960866
70172427121883998797908792274921901699720888093776
65727333001053367881220235421809751254540594752243
52584907711670556013604839586446706324415722155397
53697817977846174064955149290862569321978468622482
83972241375657056057490261407972968652414535100474
82166370484403199890008895243450658541227588666881
16427171479924442928230863465674813919123162824586
17866458359124566529476545682848912883142607690042
24219022671055626321111109370544217506941658960408
07198403850962455444362981230987879927244284909188
84580156166097919133875499200524063689912560717606
05886116467109405077541002256983155200055935729725
71636269561882670428252483600823257530420752963450
Problem with this Design
Written by Jamie Sunday, 19 June 2011 12:22
I am working through 343 mathematical problems that are collected and presented as ‘Project Euler’. I had a quick look at them on Thursday evening. By Saturday evening, I realised that the puzzles come in (at least) two variations. Firstly, they are to do with asking a question of a number. For example, puzzle three:
The prime factors of 13195 are 5, 7, 13 and 29.
What is the largest prime factor of the number 600851475143?
 TheSourceSoFar | [The Source So Far] | 4 Kb | 19/06/11 12:53 |
Problem 2
Written by Jamie Friday, 17 June 2011 09:26
Yesterday I found a collection of puzzles. I wondered what would happen if I worked through them all, one by one, with only 55 minutes - the time it takes for Dire Straits’ Brother in Arms to play - to solve them. Today, I am on problem two, which goes something like this:
Each new term in the Fibonacci sequence is generated by adding the previous two terms. By starting with 1 and 2, the first 10 terms will be:
1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, ...
By considering the terms in the Fibonacci sequence whose values do not exceed four million, find the sum of the even-valued terms.
Problem 1
Written by Jamie Thursday, 16 June 2011 17:49
It’s 18:40. I was just about to wrap up for the day. I was scrolling through my twitter feed, said hello to @LisaCrispin, and then followed a link from @michaelbolton to an article called ‘How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code’. It spoke about a web-site called Project Euler, which was is a series of problems that a registered user can solve.
Notes To SharePoint In 10 Easy Steps
Written by Jamie Thursday, 02 June 2011 17:47
I don’t do much plugging on this blog, but here I find myself doing it for the second night in a row. My friend, Andrew, wrote an article about how you go about migrating a Lotus Notes application to SharePoint. He is in the running for technical essay of the year over at SharePoint magazine.Now, a warning for all of you who know me as a cool, open sourcey sort of guy: let he who hath never benefited from a Notes application cast the first stone.
For those who want to read the article, which makes some interesting points, including tips about application governance, an often mis-understood aspect of enterprise development, follow this link. If you like it, then vote and Andrew might win the essay competition. If he wins, he might write more, which would be a good thing (he can start by doing the next iteration report).
Agile Holland Meetup - Practical Scrum
Written by Jorrit Wednesday, 27 October 2010 15:17
Yesterday the Agile Holland community organised a Pecha Kucha evening in Baarn on Practical Scrum. Having seen a few polished Pecha Kucha’s on the web I was looking forward to the evening. This would be my first chance to see the format in action, life! The format is 20 times 20, the speaker gets to use 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide to give a presentation. This keeps the presentations short and very to the point.
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