How can you make manual testing easier?

 I found this still in the printer when I bought my early morning coffee the other day.It reminded me of a time when I used to have 5 (yes, five) different printers on my desk (well, on a table next to it) to enable testing support for all the different and specific label printers the software...

Does AI mean software development will appeal to different people?

Certain personality types are attracted to software development.The logic and absolute certainty appeals to those people.AI removes that certainty. It's non-deterministic.Will this put off some people who like (or need?) the absolutes?May it attract different people with other interests and personality typ...

The most important question on a PR checklist is...

Admit it, you thought I  was going to say something about Testing. Didn't you?While testing is super important and should be part of every PR, the most important question to ask when working on something as part of a team is:Does this change include anything you need to communicate to the rest of the team?I've added this to PR templates and have been frustrated when "circumstances" have prevented...

Doing things different in CI builds

Say you have a large complex solution.Building everything takes longer than you'd like. Especially when building as part of CI checks, such as for a gated merge.To make the CI build faster, it can be tempting to have a filtered version of the solution that only builds 'the most important parts' or filters out some things that take the most time (and theoretically change least often).When such a filter...

Prompt engineering and search terms?

The prompts given to LLMs are compared to the text we can enter when searching the web.Over time, people have learned to write search queries that will help them get better answers.There's an argument that, over time, people will learn to write better prompts when interacting with LLMs.However, over time, the way websites expose, format, and provide data that's fed into the search engine so that...

Setting up a new machine with WinGet DSC - my experience

TLDR (for Clint 😜)Mostly positive, would recommendDev Home still crashes lots - but it is in preview, so I'll let it offMy scripts are at github.com/mrlacey/my-configMany sample config scripts (from the official repo) wouldn't run (failed) for me :( VS doesn't like ...

Reverse engineering a workshop

I've been working on writing a technical workshop. I've not done it before, and I couldn't find any good, simple guidelines for creating such a thing.Having asked a few people who've delivered workshops in the past, the advice I got was very generic and more about the workshops they've proctored rather than how to structure one or put one together.So, rather than make it up, I started by trying to...

If you only write one document

If you only write one document (as part of developing software), make it the test plan.Do it before you start writing the code.This applies to new features and bug fixes.This also becomes the spec.It allows you to know when you've written the code to make do everything you should.It will make working as part of a team easier.It will make code reviews faster and easier.It will make testing faster.It...

Who said it doesn't matter

That someone admitted [bad practice the business would not like to admit to] is not the issue.The problem isn't blaming who said it.The problem is that it is the culture. Trying to hide the issue or blaming someone for admitting it doesn't help. It encourages bad practice, which really only makes things worse.&nb...

Detecting relevant content of interest

When AI is actually a bit dumb. Consider something I'm seeing a lot:Content (e.g. news) app shows lots of different content.You read an article in the app within a specific category.Several hours later, an automated backend process tries to prompt re-engagement.The backend process looks at what categories of content you've looked at recently.It notices a recent article that is in that category...

Software development = basketball

This might be a leap but go with me for a minute."Lessons in basketball are lessons in life" It's a cliched phrase that was drilled into me at basketball training camps and through basketball-related movies when I was young. We weren't just being encouraged (forced?) to learn lessons that would help us play better basketball, these lessons would help throughout our lives.Thinking today about...

Sticktoitiveness and software development

I recently heard that there is a common character trait among many developers in that they won't stop working on a problem until they've solved it.I've always identified as having a similar but different trait, I won't give up when trying to solve a problem.I came to this trait as a result of some of my first jobs in the industry. Due to the internet and world being as they were, and in combination...

Did this bug report get me banned from Visual Studio?

 As an avid user of Visual Studio and a developer of many Visual Studio extensions, I have a strong interest in enhancing the discoverability and user-friendliness of extensions. I was pleased to learn about the recent implementation of a requested feature and eagerly went to explore it.Recently, I've also been exploring the use of WinGet DSC to configure a new laptop and have been experimenting...

Themes of DDD North 2024

This last weekend, I was excited to get to speak at the DDD North conference again.As a one-day, five-track conference there was a lot going on and a lot of varied content.Of the sessions I attended and the discussions I had with other attendees, I noticed lots of mentions of:AITesting (in a positive...

Lack of nuance

 No nuance is almost always incorrect!Yes, "almost" is very important in that statement.If you get a response/answer/instruction without any acknowledgement of the nuances, you're almost certainly not getting the full picture. How do you know the importance of what is missing, if you don't know what's missi...

Always use a regex rather than string manipulation

 Although, maybe not always:It's almost as if absolute claims aren't always corre...

The required amount of documentation and testing will vary

The amount of documentation and the number of tests required will vary between:code basesthe stage of developmentthe people working on itwhat the code doesmore....