Developer on Fire
Developer on Fire
Episode 022 | Aslak Hellesøy - Testing Your Understanding
Guest:
Aslak Hellesøy talks with Dave Rael about open source software, tools and frameworks, and testing understanding with communications protocols as an example
Aslak Hellesøy is the creator of Cucumber (10M downloads) and the author of the Cucumber Book (20k copies sold). He has 18 years of development experience and has been active in the open source and agile communities for 15 years.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and Aslak Hellesøy
- - The genesis and intent of the Cucumber project
- - The success and growth of Cucumber
- - The origin of the name of Cucumber
- - Aslak's definition of value
- - The things that "light Aslak up"
- - What Aslak doesn't like - big tools, frameworks, etc. trying to do everything
- - Aslak's story of failure, the importance of honest disclosure and communication
- - Aslak's greatest success story, the liberty of running a business, learning new and uncomfortable things
- - How Aslak stays current with what he needs to know
- - Aslak's book recommendation
- - The things that have Aslak most excited about his present and future
- - Aslak's shower epiphany: "It's important to test your software. It's even more important to test your understanding of what you are gong to build."
- - The greatest sources of pain in Aslak's life and work
- - The things about which Aslak like to geek out apart from software
- - Aslak's top 3 tips for delivering more value
- - Farewell
Resources:
- Cucumber
- Aslak's (inactive) blog (he blogs now on the Cucumber blog)
- Cucumber Blog
- Dan North's seminal Behaviour Driven Development blog post
- Frederick Brooks - No Silver Bullet (reference)
- Frederick Brooks - No Silver Bullet (the paper)
- Book: The Mythical Man Month - Frederick Brooks
- Udi Dahan on Microservices
- Book: Bridging the Communication Gap: Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing - Gojko Adzic
Aslak's book recommendation:
Aslak's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
1. Understand the kind of value you are trying to deliver.
2. Make sure to get some concrete examples of the value you are trying to deliver.
3. Get frequent feedback from the people to whom you are delivering value.
