Yes, I’m still here. As a super-busy consultant (who often travels) and a father of three, it’s tough to cordon off a block of time for blogging. I have a few draft posts that I’m going to resurrect and get up here today, barring any major distractions!
Works on my machine! Every developer has said this at one time or another, usually in response to someone saying there’s a bug in their software. I vividly remember working on a team about seven years ago where that phrase was heard so frequently that we shortened it to an acronym: WOMM. To this day I still chuckle a bit every time I hear those words.
Seriously, though – as a developer, how often have you tried to reproduce a problem someone is having with your application, but couldn’t? No matter how detailed the bug report, there’s always one little detail that’s missing. So what do you do? You run over to that tester’s desk and say “Can you show me how you got this bug?” Well, that person’s just as busy as you, and it takes time to retrace steps. An hour later you finally figure out how to make it not work on your machine. There must a better way.
I just finished watching a video of Cameron Skinner talking at PDC about VSTS 2010 – some of the features he demoed will bring an end to WOMM as we (or at least I) know it. In the video (about 12 minutes in) he pulls up a Bug entered into TFS by a tester using the new VSTS Manual Test Runner (part of the Camano toolset). The Test Runner has a recording feature that actually captures a video of the test execution and attaches it to the Bug with hyperlinks next to each step that point directly to the corresponding spot in the video. What? You mean I don’t have to sift through screenshots and try to correlate them to the description of the problem? Sign me up.
If you want to see this in action, check out the aforementioned PDC video – Cameron covers a ton of other new VSTS features that are worth seeing. To illustrate this particular feature, I put together a few screenshots based on one of the Walkthroughs included with the CTP.
Beginning the execution of a Manual Test.
So far so good…
Whoops! That wasn’t supposed to happen…FAIL!
Time to enter a bug. Notice what is already present on the Details tab. That hyperlink launches the attached video at the exact point when step 4 was being executed.
I must admit I’m a bit sad at the prospect that I won’t be hearing that classic phrase very often anymore because of the fond memories it always brings back. But if it means my team is working more efficiently, I guess that’s an acceptable tradeoff!
Oh yeah…in case you didn’t know, videos of select PDC 2008 sessions are being published online already (look for the little Play button next to the sessions). The conference isn’t even over yet! Nice!
Yesterday Microsoft released a new CTP of Visual Studio 2010 (the artist formerly known as Rosario). This is probably old news for those that care, but I felt this post was obligatory since I’m planning on posting some of my impressions in the very near future. This is the first CTP in six months, so what are you waiting for? Go get it!
I’ve not had much luck with blogging. My original blog host started plastering ads everywhere and didn’t offer much in the way of features. My second attempt was a big slice of FAIL cake (not to mention blocked by most corporations’ filtering software). Third time’s a charm, right?
