• (cs)
    Because of the data-driven nature of PTSv2, debugging problematic test cases became nearly impossible.
    How come?
  • (cs) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    chrismcb:
    "Because of the data-driven nature of PTSv2, debugging problematic test cases became nearly impossible."

    WTF? Why is it nearly impossible to debug test cases because they are data driven?

    Because then you'd need the guy who writes the test scripts to be able to use a debugger.

    Don't laugh. I'm currently sitting opposite exactly this problem at work. Even explaining how to right-click on the test in question and bring up the debugger involved significant investment of effort.

    OMGWTF??

    Teaching the end user (business analysts in this case) how to find bugs in your software is not a solution! Well, it is a "solution", but it's "worse than failure"!

    If the end-user finds some data which breaks the software (and requires software debugging), all they need to do is send that data to an actual programmer so the software can be fixed.

    Also, if data errors can't be fixed/handled without using a software debugger, then your software is fail at data-driven design...

  • (cs) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    operagost:
    amischiefr:
    TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's.
    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market.
    Oh no, I completely understand that. What I am suggesting is to stop these fuckers from driving all together.

    THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU (repeat)

  • (cs) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's.
    I want to know how that jackass can drive sober.
  • St Mary's Hospital for the Uncurable Damned (unregistered)

    [quote]so that business analysts could develop the macros instead of programmers.[quote]

    Why, am I still a programmer in kindergarten? Can macros also be hired?

  • Perrin Aybara (unregistered)

    Simply create the application with array based logic. Done.

  • B (unregistered) in reply to amischiefr
    amischiefr:
    operagost:
    amischiefr:
    TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's.
    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market.
    Oh no, I completely understand that. What I am suggesting is to stop these fuckers from driving all together.
    Yeah, there's nothing worse than encountering a herd of drunken drivers on the road, they should definitely be separated.
  • Ben (unregistered) in reply to B
    B:
    amischiefr:
    operagost:
    amischiefr:
    TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's.
    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market.
    Oh no, I completely understand that. What I am suggesting is to stop these fuckers from driving all together.
    Yeah, there's nothing worse than encountering a herd of drunken drivers on the road, they should definitely be separated.

    ...insurance policies tailored for DUI software testers?...

  • (cs) in reply to nixar
    "Those who ignore Unix are bound to reinvent it ... poorly"

    Pfft. Yeah, because the UNIX world doesn't have a whole shitload of its own WTFs....

  • Gordon (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    My company has offshored a project to a company in Mumbai. I'm managing their team of programmers, and all is going very well.

    They do need a lot of direction, but they're better than some of the idiots I've ended up working with at home!

  • Dark (unregistered) in reply to Duke of New York
    Duke of New York:
    Unix fanboys are bound to praise programs designed for punch-card input as the pinnacle of technology.
    Pfft. Punch cards were old hat when Unix came along. Please don't try to associate it with this ancient technology in the minds of your readers. Unix was designed for teletypes!
  • bored_in_boston (unregistered) in reply to pink_fairy
    As a general observation gleaned from the last ten years or so, testers seem to like graphs and reports and code-coverage-annotated source and the like. Only the good ones like to analyze. Very few of them are good ones.

    Unfortunately true.

    I'm one of the testers who doesn't fall into this category, and am very fortunate to work with a few others, in a team which has almost completely automated the testing of our product.

    Unfortunately, the manager for our QA team was hired for their 'immense experience as a QA manager', which roughly equated to the ability to type, and to look after a class of schoolchildren (which is what your average tester seems to be like). No concept of development, debugging, that a week developing a bit of test software is better than repeating 2 day manual tests many times, etc.

    And when the manager did want coding done, the manual testers in our team got given the coding tasks, because - we were all QA engineers, how hard can it be, it's good to share the knowledge, etc. The results were predictable for a non-coder trying to code, and being told that they were doing well by a supportive manager. Thankfully, the manual testers didn't know how to check their code into source control, so we could re-write it before we checked it in.

    The manager in question has recently moved on, the lift mechanism is nearly repaired, and things are a bit better now.

    Captcha: 'inhibeo' - what those DUIs lost when they were UI.

  • Capt. Obvious (unregistered) in reply to amischiefr

    [quote user=amischiefr] [quote user="operagost"][quote user="amischiefr"] TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's. [/quote]

    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market. [/quote] Oh no, I completely understand that. What I am suggesting is to stop these fuckers from driving all together.[/quote] I disagree. It might be valid if the limit weren't so low. Unfortunately there have been two concurrent movements. One looks at the penalties for drunk driving, sees they are too weak, and seeks to increase them. One looks at the limits for "drunk" driving, sees they are too high, and sets the threshold lower.

    This had the effect of changing driving with a BAC of 0.09 from legal (hey, people can have two glasses of wine and function) to resulting in a year of jail, etc. and according to you, permenant loss of a driver's license. In the span of a couple of years.

    Add into that there is no way to determine (short of total abstenince) whether you hit this arbitrary number. Any BAC meter you buy will probably not be admissible, and try approaching an officer when you've had two drinks over an evening and asking him to test if you can drive legally.

  • Capt. Obvious (unregistered) in reply to Capt. Obvious

    Sorry, test then deploy.

    amischiefr:
    operagost:
    amischiefr:
    TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's.

    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market.

    Oh no, I completely understand that. What I am suggesting is to stop these fuckers from driving all together.
    I disagree. It might be valid if the limit weren't so low. Unfortunately there have been two concurrent movements. One looks at the penalties for drunk driving, sees they are too weak, and seeks to increase them. One looks at the limits for "drunk" driving, sees they are too high, and sets the threshold lower.

    This had the effect of changing driving with a BAC of 0.09 from legal (hey, people can have two glasses of wine and function) to resulting in a year of jail, etc. and according to you, permenant loss of a driver's license. In the span of a couple of years.

    Add into that there is no way to determine (short of total abstenince) whether you hit this arbitrary number. Any BAC meter you buy will probably not be admissible, and try approaching an officer when you've had two drinks over an evening and asking him to test if you can drive legally

  • (cs) in reply to nixar
    nixar:
    If only there was a way to cpreprocess files so as to be able to #include the content of other files; but that would be very complicated without a system to make the files update themselves automagically! Clearly, this is quite the engineering challenge!

    Right. VBScript works so very well with a preprocessor, #include, and make.

    nixar:
    My fortune file says: "Those who ignore Unix are bound to reinvent it ... poorly"

    Funny. Mine says: "Those who have brains are usually smart enough to figure out when it's appropriate to avoid Unix references, like when VBScript and Excel are the topics." Go figure.

  • (cs) in reply to Duke of New York
    Duke of New York:
    nixar:
    My fortune file says: "Those who ignore Unix are bound to reinvent it ... poorly"
    Unix fanboys are bound to praise programs designed for punch-card input as the pinnacle of technology.

    Unix is from the Teletype era (cf: /dev/tty*), not the punch-card era. It would be using EDCBIC if it were. And thank god(s|ess(es)?)? it isn't.

  • (cs) in reply to amischiefr

    In many states its required by law that you have insurance. Someone has to provide it. The DUI drivers pay a huge premium, of course, given their greater risk.

  • Worf (unregistered) in reply to Merkidemis
    Merkidemis:
    In many states its required by law that you have insurance. Someone has to provide it. The DUI drivers pay a huge premium, of course, given their greater risk.

    Just so no one thinks their regular premiums are high - these high-risk premiums are extremely high - at least an order of magnitude higher than normal premiums - if you pay maybe $2-5k a year, these guys easily pay $18k or more for insurance. So it's definitely a market that some insurers want. Probably the low end of the premiums is around $1k/month. And can rise pretty quickly on infractions.

    Alas, the premiums can be so high, these people drive uninsured... making us pay for their behavior as well in the uninsured/underinsured category.

  • (cs) in reply to nixar
    nixar:
    Duke of New York:
    nixar:
    My fortune file says: "Those who ignore Unix are bound to reinvent it ... poorly"
    Unix fanboys are bound to praise programs designed for punch-card input as the pinnacle of technology.

    Unix is from the Teletype era (cf: /dev/tty*), not the punch-card era. It would be using EDCBIC if it were. And thank god(s|ess(es)?)? it isn't.

    Hey, don't be hating. Unix is a great OS! Every PDP-11 should have it!

  • iToad (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    amischiefr:
    TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's.
    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market.

    I don't know if this is still true, but -really- bad drivers were put into the "assigned risk" pool, and every insurance company was required to take on a percentage of these people as customers. The insurance company could charge assigned risk customers a very high rate, but not a high enough rate to get back anywhere near the money that the insurance company was going to lose.

    My insurance company newsletter pointed out that assigned risk customers made up about 1-2% of customers, but were responsible for more than 30% of all payouts.

    The real WTF is that for some drivers, a reasonable annual premium would be +INF.

  • (cs) in reply to Gordon
    Gordon:
    My company has offshored a project to a company in Mumbai. I'm managing their team of programmers, and all is going very well.

    They do need a lot of direction, but they're better than some of the idiots I've ended up working with at home!

    So your entire family consists of idiots? Or who are you working with at home?

  • (cs) in reply to Capt. Obvious

    [quote user="Capt. Obvious"][quote user=amischiefr] [quote user="operagost"][quote user="amischiefr"] TRWTF is that anybody would actually insure some jackass with DUI's. [/quote]

    TRWTF is that you apparently don't know that many places require you have auto insurance-- so there's a market. [/quote] Oh no, I completely understand that. What I am suggesting is to stop these fuckers from driving all together.[/quote] I disagree. It might be valid if the limit weren't so low. Unfortunately there have been two concurrent movements. One looks at the penalties for drunk driving, sees they are too weak, and seeks to increase them. One looks at the limits for "drunk" driving, sees they are too high, and sets the threshold lower.

    This had the effect of changing driving with a BAC of 0.09 from legal (hey, people can have two glasses of wine and function) to resulting in a year of jail, etc. and according to you, permenant loss of a driver's license. In the span of a couple of years.

    Add into that there is no way to determine (short of total abstenince) whether you hit this arbitrary number. Any BAC meter you buy will probably not be admissible, and try approaching an officer when you've had two drinks over an evening and asking him to test if you can drive legally.

    [/quote]

    Well, everybody knows that some 15% of the accidents are caused by drivers under influence. But that means that 85% are caused by sober drivers. Now, who is the better driver? Don't drive when you're not drunk. It's too dangerous.

  • (cs)

    The programmers obviously didn't know how to use Excel to have it search for the values. Quickly. Using a built-in function that does searches very fast. Such as VLookup.

    Reading each record to check for a value is just stupid. Excel is a fantastic program, although it can be misused like anything else.

  • letsbehonest (unregistered) in reply to havokk

    Well, I know we all pretend QA and Dev are equal; it makes us feel good to say that at meetings. But if we're honest with ourselves, we know otherwise. Consider the skill level required to be an average developer vs. an average tester. Or, if you prefer, consider the talent of a top notch developer vs. a top notch tester. The difference is striking and is typically reflected in compensation (and rightfully so). They are leagues apart.

    This is not to say that QA is not a vital part of development; they are. I just find it amusing everytime I hear the argument that testers are somehow on an equal footing with developers. So, yes, testers are second-class citizens. That may sound snobby, but it's honest.

  • Duke of New York (unregistered) in reply to nixar
    nixar:
    Unix is from the Teletype era (cf: /dev/tty*), not the punch-card era. It would be using EDCBIC if it were. And thank god(s|ess(es)?)? it isn't.
    The syntax of makefiles is as obviously designed around punch cards as anything can be.
  • Gordon (unregistered) in reply to ClaudeSuck.de

    Clearly, when I say working at home, I mean my home country (UK), as opposed to India :)

    Anyway, the point is that it I just told them what I wanted then waited until they delivered it, it would be pish. If you're prepared to spend time working with a team, you have a much better chance of getting a quality product at the end of it.

  • Stiggy (unregistered) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    The programmers obviously didn't know how to use Excel to have it search for the values. Quickly. Using a built-in function that does searches very fast. Such as VLookup.

    Reading each record to check for a value is just stupid. Excel is a fantastic program, although it can be misused like anything else.

    No... No, please... not the V word...

    <Shudder>

    Every time a user wants to request an application, of any complexity, that involves some relational aspect, they always use the only point of reference they have available:

    "That should be real quick, right? After all, it's only a couple of VLookups..."

    ARRGGHHHH!!!!!

  • esrever_otua (unregistered) in reply to JPhi
    JPhi:
    Capsela rocks! I loved those when I was a kid!

    (the stock photo for the uninformed)

    I still have mine - and the kids love 'em :)

  • AdT (unregistered) in reply to C. F. Martin
    C. F. Martin:
    "In an effort to save more money, management outsourced the automation project to an offshore team."

    You sir, have become your own troll.

    One of our long time customers outsourced a mission-critical software development job to India. The result is unusable, the deadline is looming, and now it's on one of my coworkers to waive his Christmas vacation for a rewrite-from-scratch-without-even-looking-at-the-previous-version as the customer will otherwise be liable for substantial contract damages.

    There are of course thousands of software development offshoring success stories. It just happens that I never heard of a single one of them.

  • (cs) in reply to Stiggy
    Stiggy:
    DWalker59:
    The programmers obviously didn't know how to use Excel to have it search for the values. Quickly. Using a built-in function that does searches very fast. Such as VLookup.

    Reading each record to check for a value is just stupid. Excel is a fantastic program, although it can be misused like anything else.

    No... No, please... not the V word...

    <Shudder>

    Every time a user wants to request an application, of any complexity, that involves some relational aspect, they always use the only point of reference they have available:

    "That should be real quick, right? After all, it's only a couple of VLookups..."

    ARRGGHHHH!!!!!

    VLookups are fast if they are done right. No need to AAAARRGGHHHH over it. Of course, Excel is not a relational database.

  • (cs)

    Well, after the first set of problems (which showed a near-total lack of ability right off) they went to the same company to do v2. The result was a second-draft system which worked ok on a few tests, but failed when scaled to the real-world problem.

    The company got what it deserved, even if the users and programmers didn't deserve the headaches.

  • Joshua (unregistered) in reply to esrever_otua

    I wish I still had mine. I'm very surprised no one's picked them up for production again.

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