Trust No One (including yourself)

No matter how good people are, everyone makes mistakes when working on a software app. Software usually fails on assumptions like with Y2K. SO, if you have assumptions in the programs you write, you should have tests that verify that those assumptions are true. If you are installing on a different env. you should have tests to verify that the env. is good: that you can connect to your database, that any dependencies hold true. It's not because of distrust of others that you should write tests like that. It's always about identifying the problem and addressing it "yesterday". It's not a blame game, it's taking responsibility.

Now, as anyone can guess this is about me today (isn't it always?). I wish that I had built some tests better to identity all my assumptions. I have a lot, but today that wasn't enough. Lesson learned.

XXPP

Aleks sent this to me and I couldn't resist posting it. Do you like XP programming? Like pair programming? Then this chair is for you. Nice. I just hope you don't have to sit with someone who weighs too much more than you! hahahaha....

Ugg...

I feel crappy, but not crappy enough to stay home / go to the doctor. Just generally icky and not able to focus. I hate things like this where I feel hot and cold at the same time. To top it all off my sunburn from last week is peeling. Note: don't wear a black shirt when your skin is peeling off, it makes you look like you have really nasty dandruff. :-(

Figured it out

I've figured it out: I've got a drinking problem. No, it's not alcohol. It's whatever is close to me when I am stressed. That's why I drank so much coke when I was in school. I've been trying to get away from coke and not drink too much coffee. My new weapon of choice: water. This morning in like a 3 hour span I drank a coffee and over 2 (or 2.5?) L of water. I'm swimming. I just have to make sure that wherever I sit when I am working hard I am closer to water than I am to coke. ;-)

Some days...

Some days I don't think that I need a coffee. I'm secure enough to admit that I am wrong on those days. :-P

Going to be far, far away...

Summer is getting closer and that's making me excited. Not because it's going to be warm and beautiful here, but because this summer Laura and I are going for a trip. We're going to France, Spain and Portugal. I'm really excited because this is the first time that I am really leaving this timezone. That's one of the main reasons why I bought a digital camera before Christmas this year. I think that it'll be the longest vacation that I will have taken since I was 14... I'm very excited and figured that it was time to start telling more people. ;-)

QotD - April 13, 2005

Stolen from /. of course:

Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.
-- Christina Rossetti

Training day

There are many different ways to measure software to give you an idea of the quality of it. Even though many of these metrics provide hard numbers, the answer is still soft. You can't perfectly compare one app's stats against anothers. e.g. App A has 80% code coverage, App B has 79%, so App A is better quality than App B => wrong.

One of the my fav. indicators of usability of software is how many "training issues" an app has. That's a way to describe the gaps between how the average user thinks the software should work the first time through and how it actually works.

Assume a user base of 100. The first time an issue comes up you document it (of course) and let them know what the work around (proper use) is. The second second or third time you put it in an FAQ. If it happens 4 or 5 times it's time to think about a redesign because it's just not working. For any application, if 5% people reported having problems will a part of the app, that's a great indication that you designed that part wrong.

Training like other things (manually testing) isn't something that you want to do because it's one of the more expensive parts of software. It's always a great idea to figure out how to spend less time and effort of these areas. That's why there is automated testing. And that's why you do usabilty testing / beta testing to figure out where these "training issues" are and reduce them before you move to a larger audience.

It's all about the test / feedback loop.

Fingerprint? I'll find somewhere else thank you.

It appears that if you are not from Canada and trying to get into the USA you will have to submit to being fingerprinted. Now I have nothing to hide, but I don't think that if I was from a different country I would go to the US if I could go somewhere else. Would you go to a country in Europe if they "demand[ed] a fingerprint from all [non-Canadian] foreign visitors"? Crazy. I wonder how long before foreign visitors are submitted to an interview with help.

Interesting

Really interesting comment on /. today about comparing programming languages. Usually people don't write so well or clearly on slashdot.