This is my happy face >> :-)
Friday, May 27, 2016
Security+ Certification!
After weeks of study, I am now officially CompTIA Security+ Certified!
This is my happy face >> :-)
This is my happy face >> :-)
Wednesday, May 4, 2016
Monday, May 2, 2016
Testing: A Confession
I have a confession to make. In the software world, this confession probably ranks right up there with kicking kittens or believing that Firefly deserved to be cancelled, but it's one that I still feel I should make. I've been a developer for over 15 years, and almost all of that time has been spent NOT WRITING TESTS. I have always done the traditional developer QA and smoke testing, but I have spent years making all sorts of excuses as to why I don't actually write tests: I don't have the time to do it. My company's infrastructure isn't set up for it. We have a QA team that does our testing. Or my favorite: We have a mass of legacy code and it's too hard to test.
Those may be some valid "reasons", but they're really just excuses.
I'm a hypocrite, too. I've known the value of testing for most of my career. I've preached that it should be done. But I've never really strongly advocated for it where I've worked. I'm changing that.
I work on a fairly significant code base that doesn't currently have any tests. We constantly make changes and we deploy often. In the last couple of weeks, I've been bitten twice by code that I just created that affected other pieces of my site in ways that I didn't expect. Proper Unit Tests would have picked up those regressions before I ever even checked in my code. So this has given me a bit of a kick to actually start doing something about it. I'm fortunate in that I have a few allies at work who see this need, too. I don't have to be the new guy bucking the system.
We work mostly with ColdFusion and jQuery, so a large hurdle has been just figuring out what the best way to test is. I've chosen Ortus' TestBox for my CF code. It's got great support. It's fairly easy to setup and use. I like it a lot. I've only got a couple dozen tests in place, but I already see several ways that I should have written my code better. I'm seeing some things that appear to be hard to test, but I think that's because I'm just not well-versed in actually testing software like this. I'm determined to get much better at it.
I've confessed my sin. I don't really feel that much better, but let the adventure begin.
Those may be some valid "reasons", but they're really just excuses.
I'm a hypocrite, too. I've known the value of testing for most of my career. I've preached that it should be done. But I've never really strongly advocated for it where I've worked. I'm changing that.
I work on a fairly significant code base that doesn't currently have any tests. We constantly make changes and we deploy often. In the last couple of weeks, I've been bitten twice by code that I just created that affected other pieces of my site in ways that I didn't expect. Proper Unit Tests would have picked up those regressions before I ever even checked in my code. So this has given me a bit of a kick to actually start doing something about it. I'm fortunate in that I have a few allies at work who see this need, too. I don't have to be the new guy bucking the system.
We work mostly with ColdFusion and jQuery, so a large hurdle has been just figuring out what the best way to test is. I've chosen Ortus' TestBox for my CF code. It's got great support. It's fairly easy to setup and use. I like it a lot. I've only got a couple dozen tests in place, but I already see several ways that I should have written my code better. I'm seeing some things that appear to be hard to test, but I think that's because I'm just not well-versed in actually testing software like this. I'm determined to get much better at it.
I've confessed my sin. I don't really feel that much better, but let the adventure begin.
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