Problem: You’re writing Gherkin in Eclipse and you can’t figure out how to adjust font size in your Feature editor.
Solution: It’s actually in the Basic text editor. Window -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Colors and Fonts -> Select “Basic” folder in panel -> Text Font -> Edit.
Bonus: Make sure you’re using the Eclipse theme color plugin plus the Cucumber for Eclipse plugin.
I’ve had a Surface 3 Pro now for three months, and I thought I’d share my experiences with it for those interested.
TL;DR version: I hate it BUT I have some very specific use cases I bought it for—and it fails horribly at those. I know others who love their S3s, and there are a few things I do like about the system.
I bought the Surface to handle loads of content production, authoring, and training when I figured I was heading out as an indie. I didn’t feel I needed a high-horsepower dev system, as that’s not my area.
Specifically, I needed a system that kicked butt at:
I purchased a top-of-the-line i7 Surface 3 Pro with 8GB RAM and the 256 GB SSD. I also sprang for a docking station and a few other odds and ends. Total cost was somewhere around $2,200 I think. (I’m on the road and away from my receipts…)
There are some things I really enjoy about the S3:
Here’s where the wheels fall off. Completely.
Power management. I hope the crew that designed power management on the Surface 3 gets infested with bedbugs and fire ants. The power management options are stupid, such that:
The screen driver is tetchy and causes issues when I’m working in VMs. It also won’t let me properly use Telerik Test Studio on the native S3.
Do keep in mind my very specific use case. I know other folks who love their Surfaces. Good for them, and frankly I see some good use from this when watching Netflix or reading while on the road.
That said, for ME this is worst tech purchase ever. Over $2,200 with docking station and extras. Wish I’d gone with a completely different platform. :-/
It’s another new chapter for me today: I’m joining Pillar Technology as an Executive Consultant!
I’ve known folks at Pillar for years in many different roles. They were instrumental in helping us sponsor CodeMash, and they’re deeply involved in the Heartland region’s active developer community. When we were struggling during the first CodeMash and knew we were tight on budget, Bob Myers, Pillar’s CEO, personally wrote me an extra check for $2,000 just in case we needed it. I was happy to be able to return it to him, but wow, what a great gesture!
I’ve talked with Pillar several times over the years about coming on board, and I always respected their team, but things weren’t ever quite right for one reason or another. Pillar’s Matt Van Vleet’s probably bought me as many breakfasts as he has key clients…
When I came back on the job market in December Pillar’s Don Abney immediately reached out to me and I had a great chat with him. I was extremely impressed with the extreme focus Pillar’s showing now, and I was very intrigued by the serious change they’re making in the organizations they’re working with.
Today I’m onboarding over at Pillar’s Forge in Columbus, and tonight I’m driving up to Detroit where I’ll start at a huge enterprise helping some of their teams build up their testing and delivery competencies. And automation. Go figure. I’m excited because I get to roll up my sleeves and do work, as well as help coach others along—which always ends up transforming me as much as those others.
It’s an exciting future, and I’m looking forward to the journey!
I’ve lost track of the number of times new testers have asked me some variant of “I’m new to testing. What automation tool should I start learning?”
I really appreciate their excitement about automation—especially since I’ve made automation my wheelhouse—but it’s not the thing new testers should focus on!
Testing’s a craft with a whole lot of tools, most of which are between one’s ears. You need to focus on developing your skills as a craftsperson, not just jumping on the automation bandwagon. (Please, do join me on board, though. It’s a great wagon to use for parts of your testing ride!)
As a newcomer, there are a tremendous number of things you can use to build up your testing skills. In no particular order, here’s a few things I’ve pointed people to over the various years.
People:
Other people who I’m not taking enough time to describe their awesomeness, but simply list. All are easily discoverable on Twitter, Google, etc.
General testing folks
Automation geeks (who are also great testers, btw)
Please keep in mind: these folks are a starting point! Many are folks I know personally and respect, and they’re pals. Expand beyond this list!
Books:
There are plenty of great books to read; these are a few titles that really stick out:
Community:
Find testing groups near you, or start one! Look to some of the various online testing communities. Weekend Testers is a great start!
Conferences:
Some conferences are great, so are a waste of time and money. But I’m slightly opinionated…
Branch out to good developer conferences where there’s a welcoming, encouraging atmosphere. I’m biased, having been on the Board of Directors, but CodeMash is one of the best conferences you could hit for cross-polinating.
Other:
Testing is about curiosity. It’s about sharing information with your team, organization, and customers. It’s not about “assuring” quality—you as a tester simply can’t do that. You can be part of a team that delivers great quality.
Go out. Explore. Learn.
THEN go get started in automation.
Problem: Your VMWare guests may be incredibly slow or all together hang.
Solution: (One potential one) Check if your VMs disks have become corrupted. Repair them if so.
Steps:
Do the following with your VM powered off!
Find the logs for your VM. They’re usually in the VM’s root directory, eg
E:\VMs\2012R2\Win2K8R2.vmwarevm
Open the latest logfile in that directory, eg vmware.log
If you find hits similar to the example below, you’ll need to run the disk repair utility.
2015-02-13T14:00:06.102-05:00| vmx| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened [2]: “Virtual Disk-s003.vmdk” (0xa)
2015-02-13T14:00:06.107-05:00| Worker#0| I120: DISKLIB-SPARSE: “E:\VMs\2012R2\Win2K8R2.vmwarevm\Win2K8R2-s001.vmdk” : failed to open (14): Disk needs repair.
Open a command prompt and navigate to your VMWare install directory. On my system it’s:
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware Workstation
Run the following command, where “” is the folder containing your VM’s disk—likely the same folder you found the logfile in above.
vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -R
Start your VM back up. Once it’s back up and stable, check the latest logfile and search for the same “repair” error. If “repair” isn’t found, search for the same file opening entry just before you ran the utility:
2015-02-13T14:00:06.102-05:00| vmx| I120: DISKLIB-DSCPTR: Opened [2]: “Virtual Disk-s003.vmdk” (0xa)
Verify there aren’t any errors.
Hopefully this will get you up and running!
Problem: Outlook’s “instant search” isn’t returning any results, or search isn’t returning results unless you change the scope from its default Current Mailbox to something else.
Solution: (Well, more accurately One Potential Solution) Run scanpst.exe, found in the same folder as Outlook.exe. On my system that’s C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office15.
Point the utility at your PST or OST files. It will scan them. If it finds errors, you’re offered the option to back them up (Duh!) before repairing.
Fixed up my search problems that had been nagging me for a bit too long…
I’m really pleased to be returning to the KalamazooX Conference as a speaker. KalX is my second favorite conference in the world, right behind CodeMash. KalX is something very, very special because it focuses on the human side of things: inspiration, motivation, self-improvement, self-fulfillment.
Mike Eaton invited me back to talk about leadership, so I’m polishing up a new talk “Growing Into Leadership” based on previous talks, workshops, and of course my Leadership Journey book.
If you’ve been to KalX you know how special it is. If you’ve never been, I encourage you to consider attending—even if you need to travel. It’s that special. It’s that worth it.
Go register now on Eventbrite. You won’t be sorry. I promise.
I was surprised to find my blog as #3 on Testbuffet’s list of the Top 21 Test Automation Blogs for 2014. That’s quite flattering, and I’d like to give a big “Thanks!” to the folks at Testbuffet and the evaluators for that list.
That list is a great resource for you if you’re trying to broaden your reading horizons. There’s a lot of smart testers writing on topics other than just automation there!
I’d also encourage you to check out other lists from Testbuffet:
I’m very pleased to announce I’ve been selected to give two pre-conference workshops at CodePaLOUsa 2015!
If you’re not familiar with it, CodePaLOUsa is a terrific four day conference in Louisville, Kentucky. It’s organized by a number of terrific community folks including Chad Green, and it’s a wonderful conference full of great speakers and attendees. This is another conference where the hallway conversations are every bit as great, if not better, than the sessions themselves.
For my part of the schedule I’ll be doing my Leadership 101 workshop plus my Testing Web Applications with WebDriver session.
I hope to see you there if you’re in the neighborhood!
Last week I was talking with some folks at Pillar in Columbus, Ohio, and we were discussing career progression. The discussion evolved into how individuals could move up a career path, or be recognized as wanting more responsibilities.
John Huston, one of Pillar’s leaders, made the comment “Hone your craft, raise your hand.” That comment really struck home with me, so much so that I grabbed a 3x5 card on the table and scribbled the phrase down right in the middle of the ongoing discussion.
I love John’s phrasing because it concisely sums up one of the best ways you can advance along your career path: work hard, ask for more responsibility. I’ve always been a believer that hard work gets recognized in good organizations. [1] It’s not immediate recognition; sometimes it takes an extended effort to get to that point.
Honing your craft is critical both to you and the organization you work for. Honing your craft means you need to invest the time and energy in a focused, planned effort to improve your skills. That helps you get better at your job. Your improvement rolls up into your organization’s ability to better deliver value to whoever the customer or end users are.
Raising your hand isn’t always easy. First off, many of us (I’m looking hard in the mirror here) have problems letting our leaders know we’re ready for more responsibility. We may suffer from impostor syndrome, we may feel it’s arrogant, or we may just have a hard time speaking up. (I suffer from all three…)
Regardless, it’s something that everyone should strive to feel more confident about. Asking for more responsibility makes sure your leaders know you want to help the organization in one fashion or another&emdash;and that’s something they may have been too busy to notice.
My most favorite jobs have been opportunities that popped up after having worked hard at other roles: Director of QA at Telligent, Director of Engineering at Telerik, and a few other things further in my past. I didn’t plan for those advancements, I just worked hard at the role I was in and made it clear I was happy to take on other tasks as needed. That mindset worked out well for me and resulted in neat opportunities I’d never thought of.
Obviously my journey’s different than yours. Your mileage may vary. Insert other disclaimers here as necessary.
Point being, too often we forget that sometimes the best way to advance in one’s career is simply to focus on improving how we do our own work: Hone your craft. We also forget it’s good to let your leadership know you want more responsibility: Raise your hand.
Hone your craft, raise your hand. Solid words for moving your career along.
[1]Yes, yes, there are places and situations where it doesn’t. Remove yourself from those. You own your own path.
For those readers who attended any of my three sessions at CodeMash: Thank you! I appreciate the great audiences I had, especially those who braved the 55 or 60F temps Thursday morning in Cypress for my Ten Tips for UI Automation talk!
Here are resources for my three sessions:
Leadership 101 Workshop
- Slide deck
- The Leadership Journey, my book on growing into being a great leader.
UI Automation Workshop
- Slide deck
- Basic examples on GitHub
- Demo site showing table access, updates to UI for dynamic IDs and flag elements
Ten Tips for Web UI Automation
- Slide deck
Common references for web testing
- Dave Haeffner @TourDeDave on Twitter.
- Dave’s Elemental Selenium site and newsletter
- Richard Bradshaw @FriendlyTester on Twitter
I was having a conversation with a few smart folks a couple weeks ago and one of them mentioned a great mindset their organization has: “You broke my code? It’s my fault–I didn’t have the right tests in place.”
Step back and think about for a minute.
This quip really set me back on my heels. If you’ve read anything of mine over the years, you know how I feel about taking responsibility for one’s code and one’s tests. This organization’s mindset of owning the responsibility for bullet-proofing your own code with great tests is terrific.
It’s one thing (a great thing!) to step up to the plate and be serious about getting testing ingrained in your delivery process. It’s a serious elevation to get a mindset where every developer takes it personally when someone else breaks their code.
“You broke my code? I needed more tests.” What a great mindset.
I swore I’d never write another book after finishing 1300 pages of Windows Developer Power Tools with my co-author James Avery.
Famous last words.
When the kind folks at CodeMash asked if I could put together a four hour workshop on Leadership, I figured I’d better get some solid content laid out to make sure the class wasn’t just boring anecdotes of mine. I needed something more focused, and something with some practical put-this-to-use-tomorrow kind of ideas.
Apropos, let me introduce to you The Leadership Journey. This book contains the original Leadership 101 blogposts and will end up with a lot of new content. There will also be practical exercises to help you focus in on a few key things.
What’s the books goal? To help you answer a few key questions:
I’m publishing the book on LeanPub with a recommended price of $9.49. I hope you’ll have a look at it.
What would you find helpful in your own leadership journey? Leave me feedback here in the comments, or over on the book’s LeanPub page.
Instead of choosing the correct path in advance, develop better tools to incorrect paths soonest and without rancor.I get the point I think Mr. Cooper was trying to make: we need to be able to recover more easily from our mistakes in software. I especially love his point of “without rancor” because we need to be more accepting of the fact that the path to success is littered with unsuccessful tangents.
Do your best to choose the correct path at the start, but know how to figure out it’s an incorrect path, and figure out how to reverse soonest and without rancor.I completely agree that we need to get in the business and cultural mindset of being OK with failure/mistakes, getting out of them as quickly as possible, and doing it without rancor.
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The Leadership Journey
