Tag: debugging

Inspecting Network Traffic on Ubuntu Linux

Inspecting network traffic is a pain. Here are a collection of (built-in) tools and techniques for seeing what's going on under the hood in Ubuntu Linux.

Technical Practice 2017-07-17

Internationalization with Import-LocalizedData: Part 2

When I first sat down to write this post, this one came out instead. If you’re not familiar with the Import-LocalizedData Cmdlet, you might want to start there.

Technical Practice 2015-08-27

Strong Typing Considerations

You could also call this one “Why I Hate JavaScript,” but there are many popular languages today that do not employ strong typing. JavaScript was just the language I happened to be working in when the following code had me pulling my hair out for nearly twenty minutes:

Engineering Thinking 2013-07-31

Ruby Woes - Can't Modify Self

I’ve always liked to think that anyone can change if they want to badly enough. After about half an hour of searching, I discovered that Ruby objects, within the context of class methods, cannot. I was looking to extend the Numeric class (this is something really cool you can do in Ruby) to add a method that would “clamp” the number to be within a certain range, between a minimum and a maximum value. For example:

Technical Practice 2013-04-11

Why "Bug Free" is Impossible

One of the most common misconceptions about software testing is that, once a program or software system has gone through testing, it is free of bugs. If you accept this assumption, it logically follows that, if any bugs are found by the end user, the software was not properly tested. Both of these statements are absolutely false.

Engineering Thinking 2011-08-23

The Daily - Also Poorly Architected

A few weeks ago I took a peek at The Daily (a “digital newspaper” app from News Corp.) and quickly decided that my time and money were better spent elsewhere when it comes to getting the news. Bear in mind that I am more strict in my evaluation of The Daily because it requires a paid subscription. In my mind, that raises my expectations significantly. The initial version of the App performed poorly in a number of areas, including:

Systems & Architecture 2011-02-20

Recording Real Time to Failure

If the mean time to failure is an important statistic, why only measure it during development and testing? Building a small, anonymous crash reporting tool into your application can provide you with a wealth of information and can help you to improve your overall quality. Of course it would be wise to make sure the users are aware of this tool, wiser to give them the ability to enable and disable it as they see fit, and wisest to leave it disabled by default.

Engineering Thinking 2008-10-29

Baseline Systems for Testing

I haven’t researched this, so I don’t know if it’s already an established practice or not.

Engineering Thinking 2008-09-16