Alright everyone, I decided that for this week, I am going to move away from a QA article and talk about a general CS article. To be more specific, this article was about robots, and how even the words that they say can affect us humans. On first glance of the article, I read the title wrong and thought that humans were just bullying robots and seeing their reaction, but it is the opposite, robots are bullying humans.

The study conducted recently is a study about how human performance is affected by discouraging or encouraging words coming from a robot. They used a video game and the robot would comment on how the player was doing. It turns out that the robot saying mean things to the player about his performance caused the player to actually score lower than that of a player who was praised. As someone who dabbles in video games, I understand that people will talk about my bad skill, and I do believe that it makes players worse at what they are playing, but I didn’t think the words of a robot could have such an effect.

The test was conducted by Aaron M. Roth on about 40 participants. This test was important because most tests take a look at how humans and robots can cooperate, but this test looks at how they are when they are uncooperative. This isn’t tested as much so I fell that it is important to test this because as AI continues to develop and get better, we may see ourselves in a situation where a robot can become uncooperative. This study was done just to show that while human words definitely affect human performance, the words of a robot who is programmed to say such things can also be detrimental to us humans. We really are a weak race if I’m being honest.

I really enjoyed reading this article. The reason I chose to write this article over another QA article is that there are more ideas to write about in general CS where as QA articles are almost all the same. It is usually about the trends of 2019 or 2020. This was the first article I saw in the CS articles, and it was about robots bullying humans. This was really easy to read, and it was even easier to write about. My next blog is my last blog for the semester I believe, so hopefully there will be a great article for me to write about next week.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119075309.htm

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello again everyone and welcome to my fourth entry for the semester on this blog. today we are going to talk about some software testing trends. As the title of this post suggests, we will be talking about ten of them today. The article was written by Ulf Eriksson (Really cool name) and i started this article by skimming and it seems to be very short and concise, which means it’ll be easier for me to write about. I will only be writing about the five i found the most interesting.

So obviously, this article is going to be about trends that everyone should be seeing in 2019. Ulf leads off with mentioning the “evolution of new testing approaches” (Eriksson) due to new developments with Agile and DevOps. He then begins his list with discussing Agile. He says that Agile is being used in more and more comapanies. He then talks about what Agile is and how it works, but if you’re reading this you probably know what agile is so I won’t bore you with that. The next part caught my eye because it has to do with machine testing. I don’t know much about machine testing, but it still has my interest. Ulf describes how it is used as follows: Test suite optimization (redundancy), predictive analytics(key parameters), log analytics(automatic executing), traceability (test coverage), and defect analytics(identifying high risk areas). The next trend is the adoption of DevOps. This part was very short and it talks about continuous integration and continuous delivery. Another trend was shortening the delivery cycle. This section talks about how new technologies are being used in order to speed up the deliveries. This is interesting because this will always be a trend. New technologies are coming out everyday, so it is impossible for this trend to die down. Ulf also discusses big data testing as a trend, and I chose to write about this because it isn’t my concentration so it is interesting to read about this considering I am not studying it. Basically this kind of testing makes sure the large amounts of data are being verified correctly. In other words, this tests the quantity and quality of data.

I would have loved to write about every trend on this list, but this blog would be way too long and I would lose all my reader(s) about halfway through. However, Ulf Eriksson did a great job with this article. He didn’t go into much detail about every trend because some of them should have already been known. However, the lesser know trends were explained very well. This article was a very interesting read because I’m in quality assurance testing now, and it is nice seeing topics I learned in class in articles. I would recommend this to any testers out there.

https://dzone.com/articles/10-software-testing-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-201

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello again everyone. For my second blog of the semester (Technically third because of intro post) I am using another article by Lanier Norville. Last week, I wrote about her article on testers becoming agents of change. This week, however, I am going to be writing about some Tricentis qTest Case Studies. I picked this article because it talks about Agile Transformation, and I am personally fond of agile frameworks.

Once again Norville leads off with a nice and small yet appropriate introduction on what she is discussing. In this case, she is talking about how companies are transforming agile and DevOps. She uses her case studies to show the “critical role” (Norville) of testers.

The first case study involves a payment processing technology provider. The VP of Test Engineering, Nick Jones attended an event on DevOps and he decided that his organization needed to transform as well. Norville then discusses how payment options have an effect on whether customers end up buying something or not. Jones developed a DevOps roadmap with his team and according to Norville they have reduced the time of delivery from “14 hours to 4 minute” (Norville) This is interesting because it is a huge drop in time which is huge for a company that is constantly making deliveries.

The next study isn’t as much of a success story as the last study, however it still seems like it is helpful. The University of the West of England switched to Tricentis qTest before using an agile framework. The head of testing, Heather Daniels that she “needed to implement a test management tool” (Norville) She needed to do this in order to maintain everything that the school used. (Library systems, eLearning systems, etc.) As of now, according to Norville, two of the organizations have switched to agile. It is a big change according to Daniels, and the University still isn’t used to making small functional deliveries, but it seems like they are getting the hang of it. I like that they switched because now they are “prioritizing the things that are most important to users first.” (Norville)

This article, in my opinion, was a little bit more difficult for me to follow, but it was still a very well written article overall. I did like how well she described each of the scenarios and what was done with qTest to transform into an agile framework. It is obvious that the article is supporting the websites own product, but that is what companies are supposed to do. Overall, this was a good read, but for my next blog, I will probably be visiting another website.

New Tricentis qTest Case Studies Highlight Testing’s Critical Role in Agile Transformation

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello again my few readers, sorry I haven’t posted in a while but as you all know, I am a heavy procrastinator hence why I have 6 weeks to write 6 blogs in order to obtain an A in my class. Luckily, I am attending a presentation today so now I only have to write 5 blogs. Regardless, lets get this show on the road.

Today, I am going to talk about a blog with the title of “How Testers Can Become Agents of Change” Honestly, kind of a long title, but I don’t mind. The article is pretty short overall with 5 short sections. The first section is simple introduction to what the blog entry is going to be about. That is kind of like what I did for the first paragraph of this post. The author asks the reader to consider what they think is difficult at their job and how they will overcome said difficulty. Honestly, so far this sounds like one of those inspirational talks with some really outdated famous celebrity talking about how to be like them. This isn’t a bad thing, I just found that to be funny.

The post then explains how to identify opportunities for change. She mentions how there are three types of change: “Tool’s, processes, and people” (Norville) I assume this can mean that staff is always changing, methods are always changing, and tools are always changing which makes sense in a working environment. She says that anyone can bring change which sounds kind of cheesy, but I do like that because this shows that somebody like an Intern can bring about change. She then mentions a start, stop, continue model which is explained as the team discussing what they should stop doing, and what they should start doing. She uses an agile group as an example here and we learned about agile last semester.

Norville then talks about how to actually enact this change. This section is broken up into several subtopics which I think makes an article look cleaner and more organized. She tells the reader to know their audience in order to persuade them in the best way possible. She also says to fully understand the problem which is self explanatory. She describes the pitch as a way of presenting your information and evidence to the person you are trying to convince. This kind of follows the know your audience path. She also tells the reader to poke holes in the pitch. This is interesting because it is kind of exactly like testing where you try and break the code in order to ensure quality.

The last real paragraph is some tips that you can use in case you hit some bumps. The first of the tips is “Don’t Give Up” (This is in every inspirational post I swear). But regardless, it is true, even if you hit a bump along the way, you shouldn’t give up. The next tip is finding a team. This can be helpful with the knowing your audience part because everybody is different. She mentions learning from others successes, and I think this one is helpful because you can use methods that other people used to get your point across.

The actual last paragraph is just a closer telling the reader to start enacting change. I did enjoy this article, however this seems like an article that was directed at everyone rather than just testers. This isn’t a bad thing, but I would have liked to see more direct examples of how Software Testers can enact change. Overall this was a very well written blog. It was short and concise, and it was organized very well. I would recommend this article to anyone who is trying to make changes in their workplace, but they donf’t know how to start.

Making Software Quality a Critical Priority: How Testers Can Become Agents of Change

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

In our last week of blogging, (I know it’s sad) I decided that I will be continuing on a topic that was previously discussed a while back. (Two weeks because I procrastinated, but it’s okay we won’t talk about that). Today, or tonight rather, we will be discussing cyber security. I did my normal routine, and went back to my favorite website which I will post at the end of my last blog post for those who are interested. Anyways, the article is titled Proactive Approach to Defending Computer Systems. I saw the word proactive, and I jumped right into the article.

The article is about how three different research teams (U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in the Republic of Korea) came together to take a step in the right direction in the field of cyber security. According to scientists, which who are not mentioned for some odd reason, this is a demanding research topic.

The article then talks about the threat of cyber attacks like most articles that talk about cyber security do. In fact, the beginning of this article is more or less just an introduction on cyber attacks and how they work, but we won’t discuss this because we all know what cyber attacks involve, or at least I think we do, and this is my blog so I’m moving on.

The real information comes in about halfway through the article. A new method was found, and it is known as Moving Target Defense, or MTD.

“The concept of MTD has been introduced with the aim of increasing the adversary’s confusion or uncertainty by dynamically changing the attack surface, which consists of the reachable and exploitable vulnerabilities,” Cho said. “MTD can lead to making the adversary’s intelligence gained from previous monitoring no longer useful and accordingly results in poor attack decisions.” (Disclaimer: this quote was in the article, and I didn’t want to take credit for a direct quote). This explains the concept of MTD and the rest of the article talks about how it is used to prevent information from being taken by attackers. To summarize, use a bunch of fake changing IP addresses to prevent the attack.

I didn’t enjoy this article as much as I thought I was going to, but I do like the concept of it is hard to hit a moving target, so lets keep changing the fake IP address so hackers can’t do anything. I think that this is definitely a huge advancement in terms of cyber security, and hopefully it can prevent a lot of attacks. If i had to change one thing about the article, it would be the half page introduction on cyber security, but I don’t write articles so they can do whatever they want.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

To kick off this week of blogging, the first article of the two I will be writing about this week is titled, “How To Keep Up To Date As A Software Developer”. Like all of the other articles that I have written about on this blog, I just happened to spot this article as I was searching for other articles to write about. Although, this one stood out to me because I recently had an interview for a software development internship near my hometown, and it got me thinking. Maybe I should actually stay up to date in the latest software development trends. Luckily, I happened to stumble upon this piece of coincidental, appropriate-to-my-situation, of writing. So without further adieu, let’s talk about the read of this week.

This article is actually written in the form of an interview. The article leads off with the question, “How do you keep up to date as a web/software developer?”. This was a question that was asked on Quora, which is kind of like Yahoo! Answers, but more credible… I think. Regardless, however, the person who answered this happened to be Mario Peshev, CEO of DevriX. DevriX, if you didn’t know, is a company that handles creating WordPress platforms for other companies. I also didn’t know that, but thankfully the internet exists. I still think the article could have explained that, but what do I know about writing articles. Anyway, Mario goes on to talk about what he does to “keep up to date”. Honestly, it was exactly what I expected it to be, which is disappointing, but I don’t know what I expected. He provides 12 ways to keep up to date, and they are exactly what’d you’d expect. (Collegues, Internet, Working, Social Media, etc.) He did mention books which is an obvious answer, but he mention the Gang of Four book, and that immediately caught my attention. It made me feel all professional because we used that book in class, so, in the end, Mario and I are basically the same, except he makes a lot more money than I do.

This article would have to rank low on the list of articles I read because it was predictable. I’m not saying that the article was bad, but obviously, books and the internet are good ways to keep up to date. Granted, I don’t know why I expected there to be some magical new way to keep up to date that only Mario knew, so I guess that is my fault. Overall, this was a good read, but you already know how to do this, so you are better off finding another article.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Life in Comp Sci by Tyler Rego and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.