A lot of new Ruby developers I’ve worked with have seen the symbol notation—starting with a :— and have been confused by what a symbol actually is. There is a lot of information out there that is confusing as well. Here’s a brief rundown of what symbols are and how they are used.
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activerecord, Developers, development, Ruby, symbol
A lot of people try Test Driven Development by writing the test, writing the code, and then wondering what the big deal is. Here’s the process I follow along with an explanation of why each step helps.
As a quick note, all tests are written with the RSpec framework.
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Developers, development, rspec, test driven development, testing, tests
I’ve had a few discussions with people under various circumstances regarding Test First or Test Driven Development (TDD). Some people swear by TDD, while other don’t see how it could possibly work because “I don’t know how my code works until I write it.” My answer to this is “That’s why you need to write the test first.”
My initial exposure to Test Driven Development was while working for a client at SolutionStream. The client insisted that all development be done Test First. At first, it was a painful process. The tests took a while to write, and I really just wanted to get into solving the problem. As time went on, however, I found that writing the tests first, did a few things that made coding much more pleasant.
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BDD, debugging, Developers, development, TDD, Test First, testers, testing, tests
During my time as a Quality Assurance Engineer, I would wind up explaining to curious people that what I did was more than just testing software. So, what is Quality Assurance if it’s not just software testing? Quality Assurance is an approach to developing software. It begins with software design and ends with documentation of the product.
Q. A. on Design
Usually there are two parts of the design. You usually have a requirements document and a technical specification. Requirements documents usually have more to do with business needs but can contain flowcharts for different processes involved in the software. Most good Quality Assurance Engineers excel at picking out areas where processes can break down. This skill set doesn’t need to be limited strictly to software processes. If there’s a business process like shipping or communication with clients or other employees, QA Engineers can be useful in making certain that these processes run smoothly by identifying possible problem areas. Read More
Developers, development, QA Engineers, quality assurance, testers, testing
