Skip to main content

Shailesh Rao on Quality Assurance

In this episode (number 219) of “Test Talks,” I was able to hear Shailesh Rao’s insight into having quality software. He compared it to a “paper-free office” or a “stress-free life,” both worthy goals, but are hard to achieve. They can be strived towards, but it is near impossible to get it 100%.

He brought up the issues that bad software can pose to potentially millions of users. Bad software can open the doors to hackers, who might be able to take down websites like Twitter or Reddit. Also, it might stop airlines from being able to function — an annoyance to most, but Mr. Rao asked, “what if there was time-sensitive and lifesaving medicine onboard?”

I found this podcast brought up some aspects that I had not thought of before when if comes to quality assurance. I suppose that I’ve thought about the various things he brought up, but as a consumer and never as a creator of the software.

A very thought-provoking topic brought up was the fickleness of consumers. They don’t have the patience to put up with a buggy app. They will move on to the next thing. It is easier than ever to launch a software project to a very wide audience, and it’s become apparent to me that it should be done right the first time around because customers don’t always give a product that flopped a second chance.

Another point brought up that will affect the way I think about testing and quality control is that you should test for all possibilities or you might not know the market you missed. People often say to themselves “it won’t happen to me,” and think their software will not be downloaded millions of times, but if they didn’t prepare for those conditions, they won’t get that chance.

The core message that was hammered home was that developers should have quality at every step. With as complicated software can be, it is extremely difficult to have it be truly bug-free, but it is possible, and we should always strive to be as close to it as we can.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mark Richards on the Evolution of Software Architecture

For this week’s blog on Software Architecture, I listened to Episode 3 of the “Software Architecture Radio” Podcast, which featured Mark Richards, an independent software architect. He has 32 years in the industry, with more than twenty years as a software architect.  They mostly talked about the evolution of software architecture. Although some of the things they talked about went a little over my head, I was able to pick up on the majority of what they were talking about.  He divided up the evolution of architecture into five stages. He talked about evolution happening in vertical and horizontal slices, that is within each layer and one layer affecting those above and around it. The layers were (1) hardware, (2) software, (3) human interaction, (4) social interaction, and (5) the environment, such as the internet of things. He said one thing in particular, need, drives change the fastest. As an aside, he also said that that’s the best way of teaching something in this fi

Apprenticeship Pattern "Nurture Your Passion"

In this week’s post, I will be discussing the apprenticeship pattern “Nurture Your Passion,” as presented by Adewale Oshineye and Dave Hoover. I chose this chapter because I think I have felt like I’ve been just getting by for a while now. The  problem it identifies as, “You work in an environment that stifles your passion for the craft.” I don’t think that’s quite fair to my school or professors. I think that in any discipline, if someone is only studying for the tests or working on the assigned projects and calling it a day when they have passed them in, they are not truly adopting the apprenticeship mindset. Without a constant push forward, I will stagnate. I may get an “A” on the exam or project, but if I forget the material the next day, there is no point. The pattern suggests finding something that sparks interest and pouring myself into it. I have been wanting to do this for a while, but I have made excuse after excuse of not having enough time. The next sentence in th

OOP Basics

For this week’s blog on software design, I chose to watch a video presented by Dr. Steve Bagley on some fundamentals of object oriented programming (OOP). I’m embarrassed to say that although I am taking several upper-level computer science classes, I am unsure I would be able to give a good definition of what object oriented design was. To be fair though, it has been several years since I have taken CS 101, and it seemed like such a foreign concept at the time. I felt silly learning about something so elementary again, but it made a lot more sense when I’ve had as much exposure to OOP as I have now. For the video, he uses a game of “Pong” as an example of how OOP might use objects to represent the “ball” and “paddles.” From there, he talked some about inheritance and touched on a few more topics, albeit briefly. The main reason why I didn’t understand the benefit of this way of programming is that I didn’t know how else you would do it. I didn’t realize that without declari