Florian Sommerfeldt

@fayer.dev Your game made it into one of the non-gaming newsletters that I am subscribed to. 🎉

levparikian.substack.com/i/174773141/...

The toothpaste threshold Stick with me, my curious brain has made a connection. Hypothesis: you can tell that humans are (overly) excited about a new solution when they consider using it to clean…... The toothpaste threshold Stick with me, my curious brain has made a connection. Hypothesis: you can tell that humans are (overly) excited about a new solution when they consider using it to clean ...

I present: the toothpaste threshold

www.linkedin.com/posts/alexan...

Good morning.🌞

I think preparation was the key factor in making this workshop so productive. I came with a proposal for how to approach the testing and lots of questions. The proposal provided a basis for our discussion, and the questions helped us to gain a better understanding and generate new ideas.(3/3)

(3/3)

We now have a rough plan and a list of actions to help us further refine our test strategy.

The plan is as follows: Finish our strategy and preparations this week, then start testing next week.

It was great fun. The actionable outcome was worth the three hours.

(2/3)

Today, I ran a workshop with my development team to discuss our approach to test a major refactoring.

We discussed organisational aspects, user journeys, test environments, test data, test ideas, data migration, observability, rollback plans, nightmare headlines, risks and priorities.

(1/3)

👀

I am currently working on a more personal article, and I can't stop thinking about the chapter 'Shitty First Drafts' in 'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott.

I really disliked my first draft. I thought it was awful. However, it's slowly coming together and improving.

Funny how we force engineers to write ADRs for every trade‑off, yet billion‑dollar strategic bets live in hallway whispers and fluffy slide decks.

What if we treated business decisions like architecture? Context, options, trade‑offs, metrics, all in a repo, version‑controlled and reviewed?

Uncover the Complexity of Simple Looking Things to Test Better How to gain technical insights of the system under test to uncover hidden complexity and risks.

In today's post, I will show you how to look beyond the graphical user interface. By exploring and understanding these aspects of the software, you can make better-informed decisions about your testing. (2/2)

atesterstoolkit.substack.com/p/uncover-th...

Testing solely through a software's graphical user interface can result in important aspects of a feature being overlooked. This can lead to either insufficient or excessive testing. (1/2)

Congratulations on reaching this milestone! 🎉

It's really great to see such a successful YouTube channel dedicated to testing.

Talk about what motivated you to ask certain questions or start an analysis.

Are there any risks that you want to address? Can you identify any opportunities for improvement?

Explaining your motivation helps others to understand why this work might be important and makes it easier to discuss.

For whimsical software that’s fine, or if you *want* to see a magic trick.

When dealing with important files on my computer, I want something safe, reliable, concrete, understandable.

Screenshot of a experimental button redesign for Substage, showing a glowing rainbow effect around the button, in part inspired by Apple Intelligence

The inherent problem with "magical" styling on UI is that as users, we have an inherent mistrust of anything that claims to be magical.

Magic suggests tricks and misdirection. It suggests the unknowable. You're not allowed to know what's happening behind the curtain.

Hmmmm.

If you work with large, complex JSON structures, it is worth investing time in tools. Build something that visualises the data you regularly need in a way that makes sense to you.

I work with JSON that is ~5,000 lines long. After writing 84 lines of JS and some HTML, I save a lot of time and energy

A file called 'use-at-your-own-risk.d.ts' was found in a 'node_modules' directory within one of my web projects during a file search.

While searching for a document on risk-based testing, I came across this in one of my web projects.

I have so many questions.

17 Questions to Ask When Reviewing a Plan A list of questions to challenge a plan and make it better.

These questions look at dependencies, flow, change and testability.

It is an attempt to make the best of the limited knowledge we have at the moment we are planning. (2/2)

open.substack.com/pub/atesters...

Most plans are flawed and derail. But if we decide to invest time and energy into a plan, we should make it worthwhile and put some critical thinking and work into it.

I have a list of questions that help me to make plans more robust and be better prepared when things go wrong. (1/2)

The Benefits of Doing Things Outside Your Role About a principle that opens up opportunities to learn and improve.

And I have used all this to improve myself as a tester and the people around me.

My latest article takes a closer look at this.

open.substack.com/pub/atesters...

I do what helps the team the most in the current situation - and that's not always testing.

This principle has helped me slip into other roles. It allowed me to learn new approaches and tools. I gained a new perspective on development processes and collaboration.

#SoftwareTesting

TBM 351: The 4 Prioritization Jobs (And Why It Matters) After all these years, I finally put something into words about prioritization.

Are you trying to improve flow, make better tradeoffs, push for more strategic alignment, or clarify what's supported and what isn't?

cutlefish.substack.com/p/tbm-351-th...

What a great tool to help us better understand the situation we are in, what the causes might be, and what approaches might help us improve it.

Thanks for sharing!

In the last few weeks, I've taken a complete break from video game development and invested that time in experimenting and learning about tools I've never touched before: Ktor, htmx, MSW and Nix.

I am having so much fun.

It is so much easier to define a scope and complete or abort a project.

The test is easy to implement and maintain, helps you to find missing and obsolete keys, and helps you to keep them in sync.

Is your project struggling to keep translation files in sync? Here is a simple trick:

Write a unit test.

Read a file that is the reference, e.g. the one for English. Compare the reference with the files for the other languages. Check that only keys from the reference are present in the other files

Kaizen: With Marginal Gains to Long-Term Improvements How a team of engineers embraced continuous improvement.

How can real continuous improvement actually work? How can a team embrace the desire to improve and experiment with hundreds of changes over years without ever stopping?

In this post, I write about an approach that a team of engineers found to do just that.

open.substack.com/pub/atesters...

False Secrets as if I need to write another article about transparency...

as if I need to write even more about transparency

open.substack.com/pub/angrywea...

Last year I started a habit tracker in my notebook for writing. This year I switched to my digital calendar and use it for other activities as well.

Keeping track of these activities helps me stay motivated and appreciate how much work I put into them.

I love mornings like this:
- Continued to work on my next post with good progress.
- Could help a developer with test data to reproduce a problem and find the root cause.
- Found a way to reproduce a mysterious application crash.

It's not even 10am yet. Time for a coffee.☕

#SoftwareTesting