Skip to content

Random Tech Thoughts

  • About
  • Contact
  • Sign up

Category: Articles

Creating unit tests from scratch

January 16, 2021January 18, 2021 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

As well as refactoring existing unit tests, I’ve also recently created some tests from scratch.  I realised that, while I have gone on at length about testing on this blog, including the ways in which I think tests can be well- or poorly-written, I haven’t talked about the process of writing them. In case it’s … Continue reading Creating unit tests from scratch

Panning for meaning in unit tests

January 15, 2021January 15, 2021 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

I recently made a code change, and also made the corresponding changes to the unit tests.  Once that was sorted and tided away in a commit, I spent another commit refactoring the unit tests.  As I was refactoring, I realised that the motivation behind the refactoring, i.e. what was influencing its direction, was a desire … Continue reading Panning for meaning in unit tests

Analysing flooding rivers

December 29, 2020December 29, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

I live in a place that has a river flowing through it.  Like in many places in the UK, we have had floods this week, which has been stressful for people whose homes and businesses have been affected.  Fortunately, we were OK and no-one here was affected too badly. As a complement to the stress … Continue reading Analysing flooding rivers

What motivates your technical writing?

December 24, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

I recently received a letter from my bank that was meant to explain something, but it didn’t.  This reminded me of a fruitful conversation I had with someone on the Ministry of Testing slack community, about what motivations people might have for writing.  In this post I’ll try to dig into that a bit, in … Continue reading What motivates your technical writing?

Customers, suppliers and fences

December 16, 2020December 16, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

In my previous post, I contrasted two different terms for thinking about how people interact with your organisation – Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX).  Rebecca Brown (a CX expert I mentioned in the post) kindly explained her view of CX to me, which got me thinking of some quality and process things that … Continue reading Customers, suppliers and fences

Customer Experience or User Experience?

December 9, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

I’ve heard both Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX) used to describe how someone’s life is changed, for the better or for the worse, because of the goods or services that an organisation provides.  This article goes into my understanding of those terms – how they’re similar and different.  I don’t think that either … Continue reading Customer Experience or User Experience?

Does your website reassure and welcome?

December 6, 2020December 6, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

If you have a website, it's probably to fulfil some purpose - to let people buy something, or look something up etc. This purpose can be articulated as a series of requirements (functional or cross-functional), which can be ticked off during testing. In this article I will use some buildings to illustrate a point about … Continue reading Does your website reassure and welcome?

GB roads with gaps

November 6, 2020November 7, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

I was driving recently, and realised that I was near a road that appeared to have a large gap.  By that I mean: road A joins road B and stops, but some distance further along B there’s a bit more road A.  It’s as if A has been chopped into two by B, and the … Continue reading GB roads with gaps

Just detail can lead to poor documentation

October 26, 2020 ~ Bob ~ 2 Comments

I've been around computers long enough to have encountered one problem many times. It's a problem that seems to be almost built-in to computers: poor documentation. In this article I'll focus on documentation of code that you use via its source code, e.g. an API, toolkit etc. There are mental tools you possibly already use … Continue reading Just detail can lead to poor documentation

Squaring complex numbers

October 18, 2020October 22, 2020 ~ Bob ~ Leave a comment

As I mentioned in my post about quantum computing, complex numbers are a crucial part of quantum computing programs.  I rushed over their details (and lots of other things) in that post, because I was trying to lay out the headlines of everything that you (and I) would need to know in order to understand … Continue reading Squaring complex numbers

Posts navigation

Older posts

Categories

Want to be told when there’s new stuff?

If you'd like an email telling you when I've posted new stuff, go to the sign-up page.

Recent Posts

  • Creating unit tests from scratch January 16, 2021
  • Panning for meaning in unit tests January 15, 2021
  • Analysing flooding rivers December 29, 2020
  • What motivates your technical writing? December 24, 2020
  • Customers, suppliers and fences December 16, 2020
Blog at WordPress.com.
Cancel