Better Software Magazine

Better Software Magazine Articles

Becoming Indispensable

How can you achieve the lofty status of being an "indispensable" employee? Elisabeth Hendrickson shares some valuable tips, including how to adjust your attitude, where to invest your time, and how to communicate better.
Elisabeth Hendrickson's picture Elisabeth Hendrickson
July 29, 2002
A Look at the Ruby Scripting Language

The Ruby language has gained many followers recently. Ruby offers many of the same features that made Perl a popular scripting language, but also has the advantage of being a fully object-oriented language. While developing an object-oriented application in Perl might be a bit clumsy, Ruby supports object-oriented programming quite naturally. This can offer many advantages when developing a large testing application.
Phil Tomson
July 29, 2002
Small Change, Big Trouble

Ross Collard researches the cause of coding errors, and recommends some process improvements companies should implement, including establishing the minimum amount of regression testing required for new releases.
Ross Collard's picture Ross Collard
July 29, 2002
Don't Use Bug Counts to Measure Testers

Cem Kaner tells us why we should not use bug counts to measure testers. Using examples, he illustrates two problems: 1) bug counts are poor measures of individual performance; and 2) the side effects of using bug counts as a measure are serious.
Cem Kaner
July 25, 2002
Gathering Users for Great Requirements

If you buy a hammer, you are not considered a master carpenter automatically. The same holds true for tool knowledge alone solving requirements problems. Kelley Schmidt shares the biggest lesson she learned on a project: commercial process and tools alone cannot lead to project success.
Kelley Schmidt
July 11, 2002
Introducing Test-First Development

Testers are often frustrated to receive a product for testing that is riddled with bugs. They want to know why some of the bugs couldn't have been caught during development. If only some tests could be run before the code was handed off! Jason Bedunah learned the benefits of test-first development first hand. Here, he introduces a framework for testing and coding that he found to be very helpful, and he gives some pointers on getting developers on board with test-first development.
Jason L. Bedunah
July 11, 2002
Computer Science 101: Software Testing?

Summary:
Where do you find new testers? For the most part, the answer is typically not "from your local university computer science or software engineering department." Testing just isn't taught as a subject in most university curricula. Here, James Whittaker suggests ways to get testing into your university.
James Whittaker's picture James Whittaker
June 30, 2002
Women Testing the Waters

Picture the faces around the conference table at your last project meeting. How many women were in the room? And how many of them were testers? Alyn Wambeke explores whether the traditionally male-dominated landscape of testing is changing.
Alyn Wambeke
June 30, 2002
Generating Test Code with Teradyne TestMaster

Robin Sahner looks at generating test code with Teradyne TestMaster. His group evaluated TestMaster on two projects. It did what they hoped it would, and now they're using TestMaster on all of their projects. They're not employing it to shorten their test development time or use fewer people; instead they plan to use it to get a more complete, more easily maintained set of functional tests using the same resources. Editors Note: Teradyne SST has become a new company called Empirix.
Robin Sahner
June 30, 2002
Breaking the Language Barrier

It's wasteful, more often than not, to reinvent the wheel. Christopher Meisenzahl explains how he solved a high-tech automation challenge through the sharing of resources. When faced with similar problems, this sort of collaboration with others may be your most valuable tool—and one that every tester should take advantage of.
Christopher J. Meisenzahl
June 30, 2002

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