Nature tester
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I'm - among other things - making a software for the ATMs (for Bitcoins they're called BTMs). Yesterday we've found out that one of our machines has probably a defective touch screen. It was randomly pressing all over the screen. On closer inspection (on site) it turned out to be a branch of a tree randomly waving in the wind and occasionally touching the screen. This branch also managed in this short time to uncover two bugs that two testing teams were unable to find during two years of product lifetime. One was even as simply as touching the screen in a certain time. One was more complex, the branch managed to 'touch' through random screens and created very weird scenarios. One of them was a really obscure bug. The branch became a honorary member of our testing team. :laugh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
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I'm - among other things - making a software for the ATMs (for Bitcoins they're called BTMs). Yesterday we've found out that one of our machines has probably a defective touch screen. It was randomly pressing all over the screen. On closer inspection (on site) it turned out to be a branch of a tree randomly waving in the wind and occasionally touching the screen. This branch also managed in this short time to uncover two bugs that two testing teams were unable to find during two years of product lifetime. One was even as simply as touching the screen in a certain time. One was more complex, the branch managed to 'touch' through random screens and created very weird scenarios. One of them was a really obscure bug. The branch became a honorary member of our testing team. :laugh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
that tree must get pay hike.. probably more fertilizers and water :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
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First day in office in my previous work... I come in the room and I see a guy looking at the roof randomly touching a screen on the table with both hands. When I asked... "what are you doing?" He answered... "playing the bored operator" 4 Years later, a line programed by me that had been working for months stable and smooth got an error... I could not get out of the status without direct access to the PLC to change some values using my laptop. A new guy had been assigned to the line, he had discovered a deadlock in his 3rd day and the worst is... I could not find out, how he did it. In that moment, I remembered my first day crystal clear and thought "man... was he right" You story has called the same flash back again.
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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that tree must get pay hike.. probably more fertilizers and water :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
We're thinking about replacing some testers with branches. It's cheaper and green. But seriously, it probably will be cut, if/when our client gets a permission to do so (it's a public place). :sigh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
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that tree must get pay hike.. probably more fertilizers and water :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
S**t mixed in water? It's a fitting description for our coffee machine byproducts waste leaks coffee ...
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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I'm - among other things - making a software for the ATMs (for Bitcoins they're called BTMs). Yesterday we've found out that one of our machines has probably a defective touch screen. It was randomly pressing all over the screen. On closer inspection (on site) it turned out to be a branch of a tree randomly waving in the wind and occasionally touching the screen. This branch also managed in this short time to uncover two bugs that two testing teams were unable to find during two years of product lifetime. One was even as simply as touching the screen in a certain time. One was more complex, the branch managed to 'touch' through random screens and created very weird scenarios. One of them was a really obscure bug. The branch became a honorary member of our testing team. :laugh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
Smart K8 wrote:
The branch became a honorary member of our testing team.
:laugh: Great story. Thanks for sharing. Made me laugh and think about the old days. Back when I worked in QA, I once entered a 10,000 character URL into IE (it is no longer possible) to test a product. The URL not only crashed the program but took down the instance of the Oracle db. I was absolutely psyched. This was so long ago that the term sql injection hadn't reached popularity and I didn't know that my "extensive testing" had a name. It was fun. Later the developer asked me, "What do you want me to do with that bug? It's ridiculous. No one would ever do that." Me: (smiling) "Doesn't matter to me what you do with it. But, at least you know it's there." I like to break stuff. Especially software. Software is soooo breakable. And most software deserves to be broken.:thumbsup: And, yes, I'm a full-time dev and have been for years. But I still love breaking software.
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I understand now as well. I'll include such random trial in my debug version and will let one copy run endlessly.
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
Smart K8 wrote:
I'll include such random trial in my debug version and will let one copy run endlessly.
And you won't be so accurated as a bored / stupid human ;) :laugh: :laugh:
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Smart K8 wrote:
I'll include such random trial in my debug version and will let one copy run endlessly.
And you won't be so accurated as a bored / stupid human ;) :laugh: :laugh:
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Smart K8 wrote:
The branch became a honorary member of our testing team.
:laugh: Great story. Thanks for sharing. Made me laugh and think about the old days. Back when I worked in QA, I once entered a 10,000 character URL into IE (it is no longer possible) to test a product. The URL not only crashed the program but took down the instance of the Oracle db. I was absolutely psyched. This was so long ago that the term sql injection hadn't reached popularity and I didn't know that my "extensive testing" had a name. It was fun. Later the developer asked me, "What do you want me to do with that bug? It's ridiculous. No one would ever do that." Me: (smiling) "Doesn't matter to me what you do with it. But, at least you know it's there." I like to break stuff. Especially software. Software is soooo breakable. And most software deserves to be broken.:thumbsup: And, yes, I'm a full-time dev and have been for years. But I still love breaking software.
raddevus wrote:
But I still love breaking software.
That's the best attitude a developer can have: because now you think of methods which could break your software and then make it better, then think of more sophisticated approaches to break your software, and so on. Most developers check their code in when a very simple "happy path scenario" seems to work, and that's their definition of "DONE".
Oh sanctissimi Wilhelmus, Theodorus, et Fredericus!
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raddevus wrote:
But I still love breaking software.
That's the best attitude a developer can have: because now you think of methods which could break your software and then make it better, then think of more sophisticated approaches to break your software, and so on. Most developers check their code in when a very simple "happy path scenario" seems to work, and that's their definition of "DONE".
Oh sanctissimi Wilhelmus, Theodorus, et Fredericus!
Bernhard Hiller wrote:
That's the best attitude a developer can have
I think so too. Instead of thinking, "it just works" developers need to _worry_ about all the cases where it does not work. It is kind of a pain because there are so many scenarios to think about when you're writing your own software, but the mindset of breaking things keeps you on the right path.
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True. We need an algorithm for 'stupid'. Then just run DoStupid() on your application to cause mayhem.
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
I recall (many years) ago a unix tool that output text to the screen. It included options to simulate a lazy/drunk human (you could specify how drunk with some numerical argument). It introduced delays, mistakes and corrections into the typing and looked convincingly human. I can't remember it being useful, but it was funny.
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raddevus wrote:
But I still love breaking software.
That's the best attitude a developer can have: because now you think of methods which could break your software and then make it better, then think of more sophisticated approaches to break your software, and so on. Most developers check their code in when a very simple "happy path scenario" seems to work, and that's their definition of "DONE".
Oh sanctissimi Wilhelmus, Theodorus, et Fredericus!
IMO if you're not doing behavioral or regression testing on your modules throughout development you're doing it wrong. Leaning on code coverage unit tests in place of this is one of my biggest kvetches about the TDD culture.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
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I'm - among other things - making a software for the ATMs (for Bitcoins they're called BTMs). Yesterday we've found out that one of our machines has probably a defective touch screen. It was randomly pressing all over the screen. On closer inspection (on site) it turned out to be a branch of a tree randomly waving in the wind and occasionally touching the screen. This branch also managed in this short time to uncover two bugs that two testing teams were unable to find during two years of product lifetime. One was even as simply as touching the screen in a certain time. One was more complex, the branch managed to 'touch' through random screens and created very weird scenarios. One of them was a really obscure bug. The branch became a honorary member of our testing team. :laugh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
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Smart K8 wrote:
The branch became a honorary member of our testing team.
:laugh: Great story. Thanks for sharing. Made me laugh and think about the old days. Back when I worked in QA, I once entered a 10,000 character URL into IE (it is no longer possible) to test a product. The URL not only crashed the program but took down the instance of the Oracle db. I was absolutely psyched. This was so long ago that the term sql injection hadn't reached popularity and I didn't know that my "extensive testing" had a name. It was fun. Later the developer asked me, "What do you want me to do with that bug? It's ridiculous. No one would ever do that." Me: (smiling) "Doesn't matter to me what you do with it. But, at least you know it's there." I like to break stuff. Especially software. Software is soooo breakable. And most software deserves to be broken.:thumbsup: And, yes, I'm a full-time dev and have been for years. But I still love breaking software.
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"What do you want me to do with that bug? It's ridiculous. No one would ever do that." Not so fast... my cat could do it with one paw!
It took too long. It too soo long.
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I'm - among other things - making a software for the ATMs (for Bitcoins they're called BTMs). Yesterday we've found out that one of our machines has probably a defective touch screen. It was randomly pressing all over the screen. On closer inspection (on site) it turned out to be a branch of a tree randomly waving in the wind and occasionally touching the screen. This branch also managed in this short time to uncover two bugs that two testing teams were unable to find during two years of product lifetime. One was even as simply as touching the screen in a certain time. One was more complex, the branch managed to 'touch' through random screens and created very weird scenarios. One of them was a really obscure bug. The branch became a honorary member of our testing team. :laugh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
No amount of testing can flesh out bugs faster than an end user. Even if it's a tree. I swear some trees are more on the ball anyway.
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I'm - among other things - making a software for the ATMs (for Bitcoins they're called BTMs). Yesterday we've found out that one of our machines has probably a defective touch screen. It was randomly pressing all over the screen. On closer inspection (on site) it turned out to be a branch of a tree randomly waving in the wind and occasionally touching the screen. This branch also managed in this short time to uncover two bugs that two testing teams were unable to find during two years of product lifetime. One was even as simply as touching the screen in a certain time. One was more complex, the branch managed to 'touch' through random screens and created very weird scenarios. One of them was a really obscure bug. The branch became a honorary member of our testing team. :laugh:
In order to understand stack overflow, you must first understand stack overflow.
Reminds me of an old testing method we had thirty years ago: The five-year-old test. This was in the pre-GUI-days, with keyboard input and ASCII output only, when the final test before release was to put your five year old at the keyboard, telling him: Do whatever you want! Daddy will give you an ice cream cone for every time you make the program stop, and can show daddy how you did it! I wouldn't say we used that test method regulary, but we did catch a few bugs that way.
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Reminds me of an old testing method we had thirty years ago: The five-year-old test. This was in the pre-GUI-days, with keyboard input and ASCII output only, when the final test before release was to put your five year old at the keyboard, telling him: Do whatever you want! Daddy will give you an ice cream cone for every time you make the program stop, and can show daddy how you did it! I wouldn't say we used that test method regulary, but we did catch a few bugs that way.
People without children use the cat for it ;P :laugh:
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.