No bug left behind

The Software Quality Digest with the latest articles, blog postings and discussions about software quality, testing, usability, accessibility, scalability and related topics of the past week. If you have a relevant link for the Software Quality Digest, please let us know and we would be happy to include it in the next digest.

Software Quality and Testing

• Quality is Dead #1: The Hypothesis – “You know it’s dead, too, don’t you? You long ago stopped expecting anything to just work on your desktop, right? Same here.” .. and a response by Uncle Bob
• Which Is More Beautiful Architecture – FP or OOP? – “So, who wins? That’s a good question. If you’re in a world resigned to side effects then OOP might just be for you. Else, Haskell and the lessons learned from the language can be powerful instruments in creating rich and beautiful architectures using pure functional techniques. “
• Anecdote Driven Development, or Why I Don’t Do TDD – “Two words: tee dious (sic).”
• Are short methods actually worse? – “Another way of putting it is: short methods may have more defects per line, but they still have fewer defects overall.”
• What makes a system hard to work with? – “My point here is that I definitely believe that there are certain ‘qualities’ of a system’s design that either hinder or accelerate the progress of the system.”
• Slow tests are a bug – “And slow tests are a problem for at least two reasons: they slow down your development and decrease code quality.”

Usability and Acessibility

• Bargain Basement Usability Testing – “We know it is good to focus on usability. We need only look at Apple and the iPod to know that it provides tangible benefits. However, in reality we often shy away. It is hard to prioritize usability when deadlines are looming and budgets are tight.”
• Kindle 2 Usability Review – “The new version of Kindle, Amazon.com’s dedicated e-book device, recently shipped with an improved display and various other upgrades. It now provides good usability for reading linear fiction (mainly novels), though it’s less usable for other reading tasks.”
• Beautiful Forms – Design, Style, & make it work with PHP & Ajax – “We will go through designing and usability you need to keep in mind, styling your form, spicing it up with some nice javascript effects, validating user’s input and finally getting it to work using PHP and Ajax.”

Performance and Scalability

• The Computer Performance Shell Game – “If you’re interested in performance, the absolute first thing you have to do is determine which of these bottlenecks is currently impeding performance — and eliminate it.”
• Performance Impact of CSS Selectors – “This had me convinced that optimizing CSS selectors was a key step to fast pages.”

Technical Tips

• Understand Normalization Before Denormalizing – “Database denormalization is an area which is frequently misunderstood and gets software developers into trouble. Many developers seem to think that denormalization is the antithesis of normalization and have conflicting goals.”

Process and Methodology

• How to be a program manager – “Having a good program manager is one of the secret formulas to making really great software. And you probably don’t have one on your team, because most teams don’t.”
• Sharpening the Saw – “Sharpening the saw is shorthand for anything you do that isn’t programming, necessarily, but (theoretically) makes you a better programmer.”
• The Bare Minimum – “When it comes to project management, I tend to favor the less-is-more approach. For the most part, I think teams should be self-managed and organized. I’ve never seen project managers actually add value – they merely get in the way and slow teams down.”
• Agile, management tools help small team boost software quality – “Indeed, Comet estimates that these tactics have improved software quality by 25% and time-to-market by 10 to 20%.”
• Improving Software Process – A Letter to Upper Management – “Any process, principle, practice we choose should have quality at its heart. Regardless of what process, principles, practices we adopt they will only be successful if we are disciplined enough to follow them.”

Misc

• Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming! – A new search engine by the makers of Mathematica, launching in May
• How to Succeed at Anything – “The good news: Talent is meaningless. You can be world-class at anything.”

Related posts:

1. Software Quality Digest – 2009-07-27
2. Software Quality Digest – 2009-04-06

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