I’m currently reading Brian P. Hogan‘s book ‘Write Better with Vale‘, about Vale (a command line tool to ease follwing style guides in prose text). While intended for prose text (as far as I know), Vale can also process any text file, including code.
When I tried to copy & paste commands from the epub version of the book, into my shell, I got an error message:
> vale .
E100 [NewE201] Runtime error
The path ‘…/vale_example_project/../styles’ does not exist.
Execution stopped with code 1.
After some exploration, I figured that some zero-width-space characters were in the INI file I copied into my example project (and reported it over at the books feedback site).
Then I realised that I could create my own Vale rule to detect these invisible characters in text files.
Now, Vale is configured using an INI file. There you declare where it can find the styles and which rules should be applied for which files (see https://vale.sh/docs/vale-ini for more details). I set up a new rule in a file …/styles/Custom/NoZeroWidthSpaces.yml:
# Styles/Custom/NoZeroWidthSpace.yml
extends: existence
message: "Avoid using zero-width or invisible characters (%s)."
level: error
scope: raw
raw:
- '[\u200B\u200C\u200D\u2060\uFEFF]'
I set up Vale to use this new Custom rule in .vale.ini like this:
StylesPath = styles
[*.md]
BasedOnStyles = Custom
With that, I get a nice message when running vale against a file riddled with those characters::
> vale .
example.md
1:111 error Avoid using zero-width or Custom.NoZeroWidthSpaces
invisible characters ().
Admittedly, the empty looking parentheses aren’t very instructive, since they contain invisible characters. At least it’s possible to copy-&-paste them to find out what they are in other tools.
At Agile Testing Days 2024, I offer a full-full day tutorial, ‘The Disappearance of J. T. Womblegast — A Git Tutorial‘ (on 19. Nov.). As the name suggests, the tutorial is about working with Git. But it’s also a mystery journey about the disappearance of some J.T. Womblegast who strangely left nothing but a Git repository containing hints about this … retreat.
Of course, other topics are possible. If you’d like to take this opportunity and have any questions or suggestions, talk to the conference organisers (or me directly).
Note: I denote this as day zero since the conference starts counting the conference days, with ‘day one’ being the first day after the tutorial day.
As every year, the Agile Testing Days start with a tutorial day. I chose ‘Breaking into AI and Machine Learning’ by Tariq King. The tutorial followed a top-down approach. We did not have to (re-) learn linear algebra and the like before getting started. Instead, after a brief introduction to the topic, we could work on an example task: Classifying irises. A CSV file containing typical attributes of various flower species was used to create a model that could classify a flower as one of the species the model was trained on. Tariq introduced this as the ‘Hello world of AI’.
We saw how overfitting a model can cause issues when a model is used with new data it wasn’t trained on. This happens when the model matches the test data (nearly) perfectly, which usually causes larger misclassifications when new data is put into the model.
We also learned how models can be trained on images to classify them. This is the next step since it requires processing much more data.
Then ChatGPT was introduced. While I am still a bit sceptical about some of its output since it’s known to (for example) ‘hallucinate’ citations for scientific papers. Yet, I am impressed with what can be achieved when it’s provided with enough data and prompts tuned to its needs.
In the first keynote, Maaike Brinkhof wrapped the experiences in her software testing career in the story of a role-playing game. In this setting, she met increasingly hard-to-conquer ‘bosses’. Inspiring, entertaining – and providing input for the following keynotes. In other words, It opened my mind for the conference to come.
Day 1 – No Overnight Sucess & Sociocracy
In the day’s first keynote, Kristel Kruustuk presented her thoughts about ‘10x Software Testing‘. My takeaway was this: You don’t become a ’10× tester’ overnight. Instead, it requires persistence and regular training. This matched nicely with my personal experience and is linked to one of my sessions this year.
The next session I attended was CraigRisi’s ‘Becoming an Open Sourcerer‘. He explained what teams should consider when they use open-source software. He also discussed the advantages and potential disadvantages of using open-source software. Finally, we learned about contributing to open-source projects. While contributing code changes is likely the most common way to contribute, providing documentation is another essential aspect, as are providing and improving bug reports and even (automated) tests.
Consent means “Good enough for now, safe enough to try”
John Buck, Agile Testing Days 2023
As a tester, I’m unsure how to use this to debug management, and I will admit that I haven’t tried it yet.
Day 2 – Workshop & Infotainment
I missed the first keynote of the day since the next scheduled time slot included my workshop ‘Fun with U̡̟ͩ̊̏ͬͯni͑c͐̀͢od̲̎ͅḕ̶̩͙͆‘. Much to my pleasure, it was well attended, and folks were surprised at how bad some software is with processing Unicode. As Maaike tweeted:
Biggest lesson so far at the Unicode workshop: good luck in life with computers if your name contains diacritics #agileTD
After collecting my workshop material and winding down, I attended the keynote ‘Everyone is a Leader‘ by Zuzi Šochová. I liked how easy it was to follow along and the message that everyone can be a leader – at some time, for some topic. Leadership doesn’t have to be assigned but can be assumed temporarily when it makes sense.
The following two keynotes were mindblowing! Dr. Rochelle Carr requested the audience to ‘MOVE THAT WALL‘. This talk was loud and inspiring and made me think about which walls I have that I may want to move – or tear down entirely.
‘Don’t go breaking my code‘, by Lena Nyström & Samuel Nitsche, was a keynote in a musical or rock opera format: Loud, entertaining, and fun. It also explained where and why testers and developers have different points of view. Not only that, they also demonstrated ways to get along with each other better.
I ended the day by spending time at the Agile Testing Days Book Fair, organised by Tobias Geyer and Maik Nogens. Thankfully, I got the books I was looking for: Zuzi Šochvá’s ’The Agile Leader’ and John Buck’s ‘We The People’. They were even kind enough to sign the books for me. Thank you!
Day 3 – Conflict Resolution, Micropowers & Judgment Day
In the morning keynote ‘A Fighting Chance – Learning the Art of Conflict Resolution‘, Alex Schladebeck presented pitfalls to avoid when dealing with conflict and good ways to deal with them. Planned as a pair keynote, the second speaker, Sophie Küster, couldn’t be at the conference. Sophie, you were missed, and we all hope you’re back next year! My key takeaway: Noticing that someone perceives a conflict goes a long way to mitigating it. – Especially if the affected parties know about the pitfalls, such as saying, ‘You always/never do XY’.
After this, Eveline Moolenaars and I prepared our talk ‘Micropowers: Learn to Speak Up and Be Heard‘. This was about our shared experience of recovering from cancer and its treatment and how that helped us to start asking for help – and helping others. We found the term ‘superpower’ intimidating and came up with the term ‘micropower’. We defined this as an ability one can trust that helps to act when we see things that should be changed.
In the morning keynote, ’A Fighting Chance – Learning the Art of Conflict Resolution’, Alex Schladebeck presented pitfalls to avoid when facing conflicts and good ways to deal with them. Planned as a pair keynote, the second speaker, Sophie Küster, couldn’t be at the conference. Sophie, you were missed, and we all hope you’re back next year! My takeaway: Noticing that someone perceives a conflict goes a long way to mitigating it. – Especially if the affected parties know about the pitfalls, such as saying, ‘You always/never do XYZ’.
After this, Eveline Moolenaars and I prepared our talk ‘Micropowers: Learn to Speak Up and Be Heard’. This was about our shared experience of recovering from cancer and its treatment and how that helped us to start asking for help – and helping others. We found the term ‘superpowers’ intimidating and came up with the word ‘micropower’. We defined this as an ability one can trust that helps to act when we see things that should be changed.
The keynote ‘Wait! That’s Not Tested’ by Heather Reid introduced the idea that not all things need to be tested. We need to consider time, cost and risk when testing software. And since there is never enough time to test everything anyway, we must make bets. This connects nicely to John Buck’s definition of consent: ‘Good enough for now, safe enough to try’.
The keynote, ‘The Rise of Generative AI: Judgment Day’ by Tariq King, was the perfect ending to the official program since it nicely connected to my tutorial day. He presented content (paintings and music) in pairs: One an original from a human artis, the other one created by AI is the style of that artist. The audience was tasked to tell which one was the original and which one the ‘copy’. – I found it shocking that we, the audience, did not perform particularly well.
My overall impression of the Agile Testing Days: It was a very well-planned conference, with sessions that connected ideas and concepts. I am already looking forward to Agile Testing Days 2024 – and have many ideas for proposals already.
Thank you to everyone I have met and talked with this year. I hope to see you again in 2024.
I arrived the day before the conference started and went to the gym & pool area first. After a 5½ hour drive through changing weather conditions (snow, fog, hail, sunshine, rain, more snow, sleet, and finally some more sunshine), this is just the right thing for me to shake off the stress.
I very much enjoyed this well organised tutorial. Ben presented several way to find problems and then solve them. This included some role playing and games. What I appreciate: We got all the material needed to use the games in our projects as well as his ebook ‘Impediments – Problem? What Problem?’. That’s going to be so useful when applying the exercises in my projects – or playing the game with my teams (when I will meet teams in person).
The day was made even better, since I received the confirmation that I am booked for my next project. This is especially nice, since I have worked with the team already and like it a lot!
Day 1
I found Lily Higham’s talk ‘Testing the BBC World Service‘ exciting, since she explained how her team has to cover an incredibly large number of systems, languages and devices. One important insight: ‘Test with real devices’. Also remarkable: She noted how the BBC has to deal with being blocked in some countries and how, in some cases, professional smugglers help spreading the news anyway. No details about this were shared for a good reason. We were advised against trying the smuggling ourselves.
During the OpenSpace on this day we shared some information about Mastodon – and what to consider when joining it. My point of view: Two things are important:
The server you chose
The account name
While I didn’t use them in the Open Space, here are slides I prepared just in case:
For easy reference, here are the links used in the slides:
As is a tradition by now the first day ended with a themed costume party. This year the ‘dress code’ was ‘Fairytales’. This is also the Award Night to celebrate MIATPP (Most Influential Agile Testing Professional Person) of the year, this time won by Janet Gregory. Congratulations!
Day 2
On this day, I missed quite a few sessions I wanted to attend, since I held a workshop “Fast Feedback Using Ruby”. With about 10 people attending it was just the right size to help with the many things that can (and will) go wrong in a workshop where coding is a major part. Being (maybe over-) prepared helped a lot: While I had some material prepared to be downloaded, I knew (from experience in an earlier year) that conference WiFi may – or may not – work well. I now bring my own WiFi, so I have a back-up in case the conference one doesn’t work so well. I also had the downloadable material on a tiny small local web server – and a USB stick. Yes, I was over prepared, very likely.
The day ended with the first ‘AgileTD book fair‘ and the ‘Digesting Poets Society‘. I had the pleasure to present ‘Software People … Work From Home — Insights & Experiences From Planet Earth‘, a free ebook to which contributors from (so far) 28 countries and 33 authors provided text about life during the pandemic. Only while I was talking to some of the new readers, I realised that this wasn’t a writing task for me (I still have to add my contribution), but a project management job. Organising so many people from so many countries was – and still is – some work, but oh what a pleasure, too.
Day 3
What I remember from this day most of all, is what Stéphanie Desby shared with me about her break from – and return to working in tech. I find it super interesting what leads people to leave tech, at least for a while, and then come back. As I had to leave tech for while myself, that’s probably no too surprising.
An Afterthought
I remember that in some (pre-pandemic) years, the conference covered the whole week, either with 2 tutorial days, or 4 conference days. While I thought the conference should move back to this longer format, now I’m not so convinced anymore. 4 full days with a LOT of input, talking and, yes, having fun, is demanding.
That said: I am already looking forward to the Agile Testing Days 2023! 🦄🌈
Disclaimer: I am not suggesting to change the Ruby style guide.
At a workshop I was giving a few years ago, someone not used to writing Ruby code found an interesting way, that you can write Ruby code.
First let’s assume a class Thingy, that doesn’t do anything useful. It’s just needed to demonstrate the way to write Ruby.
Assume this is in file ‘thingy.rb’:
# frozen_string_literal: true
# Thingy is only used to demonstrate
# a way of writing Ruby code
class Thingy
def initialize(*args)
@args = args
end
def this(other)
@args << other
self
end
def that(*other)
@args << other
self
end
def content
@args
end
end
Now, let’s use this class in another script, that’s showing the alternative way to write Ruby code (in file use_thingy.rb):
Notice that rather LISP-like way to parenthesise, in line 7 in particular. I still am surprised that this is possible in Ruby and actually behaves the way I’d expect.
It’s also entertaining that Rubocop does not complain about this code:
> ls
thingy.rb use_thingy.rb
> rubocop .
Inspecting 2 files
..
2 files inspected, no offenses detected
This is one of the reasons I like programming in Ruby so much: One can discover new ways (even if probably not very useful ones, sometimes) even after years of using it.
This is, again, is mostly a note to my future self. 🙂
Occasionally, I need to process a bunch of image files in a batch. Most often it’s about resizing them, so they fit into a given format of at most x ⨉ y pixels, or precisely into, say a square format. Here’s how I do it using ImageMagick and a bit of Ruby code:
Processing a single file
ImageMagick comes with convert (it’s linked to …/bin/magick on my machine), as command line tool for processing image files in a whole lot of ways. In order to resize a single file so that it ends up as a square image in a given number of pixels one can use the following on the command line (I use zsh on macOS):
convert input_file.jpg -resize 1200x1200 -background White -gravity center -extent 1200x1200 output_file.jpg
This command
reads ‘input_file.jpg’,
creates a new image with 1200⨉1200 pixels,
a white background,
resizes the input image as needed,
puts it in the center of the new image
and saves it as ‘output_file.jpg’.
Batch processing files
For this step, I use a Ruby script (of course this can also be done in zsh, bash, Python etc.):
images = Dir['file_pattern*.jpg']
images.each do |fn|
`convert #{fn} -resize 1200x1200 -background White -gravity center -extent 1200x1200 #{fn.gsub(/\./, '_res.')}`
end
Tip: Be sure to use different names for the input and output file names.
The other day a discussion about the review process of the Agile Testing Days developed:
Reading feedback on my conference proposal has been a rollercoaster. Up: They noticed that I had written "his" once instead of a gender neutral form – valid point, something I can improve. Down: It was a bloody typo and should have been "this" 😭 #SpeakerLife#AbstractsAreHard
— Tobias Geyer (he/him) (@the_qa_guy) May 19, 2022
Since I contributed to this thread and was a reviewer for this years programme, here’s my take. It’s my personal view and other reviewers may well have other aspects they focus on.
The conference offers a list of ‘hot topics’ which changes each year. If a proposal fits to this list it’s a plus, since this is a step towards a consistent conference programme.
I prefer proposals that catch my interest, without telling too much about the topic. – If a proposal already expels everything well, time may be better spent in another session.
A well written abstract text, that is easy to understand (for me) is a plus, too. This includes avoiding typos and grammatical mistakes. We all make them, and even the best spell checkers can’t catch all issues. But still, some proposals are really hard to understand due to language problems. Don’t let that get in your way of getting accepted. My tip: Get feedback by a native English speaker before (!) submitting. Many well known testers and speakers offer help and it is worthwhile accepting this help.
Understand what the fields in the proposal form are meant for. Fill them to provided the information that is asked for, Avoid repeating the same text in different parts for the form. Change the wording at least a bit. In some cases the title, sub headline, main statement and key learning(s) contained exactly the same or very similar text. To me as the reviewer this is a little bit boring, and doesn’t help me understand what the session is about.
Sometimes, repeating is worthwhile: It helps to understand what is important. Use this tool carefully.
Some questions may guide to writing a good proposal:
Will this help the reviewer to give me a high rating?
Am I giving enough information to inform a potential attendees decision to come to my session?
Am I giving too much information?
Is this a good fit for the conference this year?
A leaving personal note: It took me years to get accepted at the Agile Testing Days, even for what was then called a ‘consensus talk’. In the very early years the proposals weren’t very well written, in some years I failed to match the overall conference theme. And then it clicked, I asked for help, gave workshops, a tutorial and, in 2019 even a keynote. For me it was worth the effort.
