Human vs. Machine (man would sounded better, but sexism...)

   Last week I caught virus. I spend 4 days in bed. It made me thinking - human body and mind is such a vulnerable things. It can catch a virus, bones can be broken, can be tricked by magician, can be used by social engineer, and more things which can affect body or mind negatively or positively. I don't even need to go to addictions section.

   How much we are different from shitty software? If your source code is bad, it affects your vulnerability to outside attacks and internal crashes and bugs. Or makes You some kind special, for example like me, having rare blood antigen. Maybe core stuff at the moment can't be changed from what You got, but a lot of stuff can be hacked, overwrite and used.

   Crazy thing is social engineering. If You don't know what it is check "Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking" book. Using Your best personal character sides, like friendliness, urge to help, unreasonable truthful, it will use You, will take all needed info, and left You proud of Yourself of being a good person and hacked shit out of You. That's the reason why I use quote "Everybody lies" in my life.

   One day I would like to use my testing skills in social engineering, but I think I am to good person, and lying while looking directly into persons eyes would be extremely difficult task for me. And I lack of other skills required for this job. But maybe one day. Someday.

   With the people is hard, understanding systems is quite easy task. If shitty database is used - why not to look for a problem there? If software is developed by easily distracted person - issue will definitely will be somewhere there. If project lack of documentation, well You can guess, if tester would not find bug, customer will. If You think that hardware seems little bit odd, why not to try performance tests, it would be fun to melt core or two.

   Why not to use software testing knowledge on people? Well no, I wouldn't do that, at least not know. Maybe later, who knows? Not You, I guess.

Your friendly neighborhood Tester.

Forgot to add title...

   Started writhing three different blog posts, but can't finish them. So why the hell not to write fourth about how I can't deliver... Well this happens from time to time, and this time I planing to finish about how not to finish.

   Delivering something sometimes is a pain in the ass, and You can do nothing about it. Some time ago I had to write automation tests for website, where they were using so much on-live generated popups and other elements, that with my skills, for that time, I just couldn't write normally looking tests with expected behavior. I was struggling for couple days, at some point I was even thinking about just quitting that task.

   And in the end - I did that. Wrote horrible, unusable tests, which didn't reach expectations. Give them and never looked back.

   Now in my work I come to this very rarely, most of projects are delivered, sometimes on time, sometimes to late, but final product is prepared. In my blog writing experience – I often write same post over and over again, until I found equilibrium, and often I write myself to the corner, and then I just left several paragraph to sink in to the depths of drafts.

   Before I had and some different experiences – like I mentioned several posts ago about Why release should be postponed. And that is not bad experience. Sooner I know I'll fail, sooner I can start to take an action. After several not finished posts, I can just leave that idea, and took other one, or sooner I see that my project is going to fail, I can inform everybody that some actions need to be taken, or if I see I'm failing in my work, sooner I can leave and find new one with still good looking CV.

   I guess everybody hates failing, not finishing or loosing. Even seems the best ones fails, like my country swimmer in Olympics, everyone were expecting medal from her, but she finished second from the end. Well, last example doesn't go with my main idea, not finishing race and running away from upcoming fail can't be compared. I wanted to finish with great, uplifting example about finishing, but failed to do that. Ideas in the head didn't aligned correctly.

   Didn't want to post this crap, but skipping this one would lead for not delivering by my schedule,  so heck, who cares, maybe next time I wouldn't fail again....

Yours friendly neighborhood Tester

I don't know, but I'll do it

   Working with systems with a lot of stuff, sometimes puts You in a corner, where You don't know what to do, or how it works or why You even working with it. But any way, while You are in the corner and You need to deal with stuff, there are one way - do it. Or be fired, I don't know.

   But to do stuff, not always the best way to do it. If You don't know a thing and start doing stuff, well it can get very nasty. Situation is very simple - I took bug from not tested bugs list, don't know how to test it, and not much info in bug description. For me everything seemed simple - 15 min of testing and bug is verified. Seem YAY, all done. I have good name in team, so everybody believes me, and bug goes to production. And then nasty things starts to happen - corner cases, which happens often, not tested, they are not fixed, and whole thing starts to going down the hill like avalanche. And that is just one bug. Imagine if system architect designs new feature without knowing that he(or she, or it, if this done by some AI, it is hard to guess where we will be in near future) doing.

   It is hard to imagine, I know, but in this case everything from beginning to the end can be just falling from the cliff - You can struggle in the air, but then it reaches customer - it just hits so hard that explodes into rocks, splashing parts and good name all around place.

   Enough of negativity - doing stuff which You don't know, makes You think, understand new things, find corner cases which were not checked before. And of course how I will not use example... So I never worked before with (now imagination kicks in), hmm, I don't, hmm, I can't find good example, so I will use - fiscal printer (if don't know what it is, check it, what a piece of sh... technology). Had to spend some time reading about fiscal laws, taxes and even more horrible stuff. So now I know that printer through and through. In implementation was some ups and downs, but now it works. And I know things.


   Without downs, there are not ups, so not knowing, does not means that You wouldn't do it right, or left (I hate then right is right, but now about turn, and lead is leading, but not metal), just some time need to be spent.


   Your friendly neighborhood Tester