Bitte um Missverständnisse

Stilblüte des Tages:

"Ich denke es ist am Besten diese Tatsache offen anzusprechen damit es auf meiner Seite zu einem Missverständnis kommt."

From an idea brainstorming for "T-shirts about Code Review"

• Code Review, n: A masochistic process that makes you feel the pain of bad code yourself instead of going the much easier way of passing it on to the customer.
• Code Reviews – because it's a good feeling to see that you aren't the only one who makes obvious mistakes.
• Code Review Bullshit Bingo with 5x5 cells and entries like:
  
  • Silent catch
  • Extensive usage of Copy & Paste
  • Local temp file accidentally checked in
  • Tabs instead of spaces
  • Same error still exists in third review round
  • Function with more than 100 lines
  • Line with more than 100 characters
  • Code review with more than 100 files
  • Global variable
  • Inheritance instead of composition
  • Return -1 instead of throwing Exception
  • Missing unit tests
  • Hardcoded file path of developer's PC
  • ...
• Comic with two people talking:
  
  A: "I am the only one in my company who can maintain my component!"
  
  B: "Why, are you that smart?"
  
  A: "No, the code is that ugly."

Rätsel: Richtig oder falsch, was soll's, i wüll a goa nix vastehn, ...

Aus der Playlist einer Software-Testerin:
(Aus welchen Liedern sind diese Textschnipsel? Lösungen gerne als Kommentar.)


1. Richtig oder falsch, was soll's,
i wüll a goa nix vastehn, ...


2. It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through


3. Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst,
Are you gonna ■■■■■■■■■ or not?


4. Und er kennt seine Grenzen
Und geht trotzdem zu weit.


5. But there's no sense crying
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
'til you run out of cake.
(...)
Now these points of data
make a beautiful line.
And we're out of beta.
We're releasing on time!


6. And so I'd thought I'd let you know
That these things take forever,
I especially am slow.


7. Your faults I will proclaim!
(...)
What is right, what is wrong?


8. Neulich hab' ich einen ■■■■■■ installiert,
Der hat gut und gern' zwei Tage funktioniert.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
Na da hab' ich gar nicht lange repariert,
Sondern sofort einen neuen installiert.


9. Now did you ever realize
That your mistake had a prize?


10. Will your system be alright
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ tonight
There is no message we're receiving
Let me know, is your heart still beating?


11. ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ you'll see
There is so much that we
Don't understand
And the only thing we know
Is things don't always go
The way we planned


12. I don't know what I was doin'
But suddenly we fell apart.


13. It's not the way I hoped or how I planned
But somehow it's enough.

Corn pan

Five-minute-recipe of the day:

1 can of corn (ca. 300g)
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon tomato purée
soup cube
salt
pepper
paprika powder

Throw everything into a hot frying pan and wait a few minutes (while stirring a little).

Left is right

Listening to an older Austrian lady (AUT) who speaks very little English and a young woman from New Zealand (NZ) making conversation about what side of the road cars drive on:
AUT: "You drive on left side."
NZ: "Right."
AUT: "Right? You drive on right side?"
NZ: "No, left. You also drive on the left side, right?"
AUT: "Yes, right."
NZ: "So left."
AUT: "No. Right."

Typing on the way

So yesterday while I was on a trip to a museum I thought that it would be awesome to have some gadget to take notes with. A laptop is of course best, but it's annoying to carry around all day. A smartphone is okayish, but typing on it does suck a fair bit. A good old pen & paper notebook is hard to digitize later, not to mention that it's also somewhat bulky.

So here's my wacky idea for a much better device: It basically looks like a watch and you wear it on your wrist, but it has the ability to project a keyboard into thin air right in front of your hands. Gyrosensors inside it adjust the position of the projected keyboard to compensate for your wrist movements. In addition, it projects just a very low resolution screen with two or three lines; Just enough to see the text you enter.

Then it allows you to start typing on that projected keyboard. It tracks the movement of your fingers using a camera, and turns the information into key stokes to type your text.

All the calculating power and memory for it is inside a small chip within that watch; Besides the projecting and the video recognition (which aren't small tasks, I admit) you don't need much, only a simple text editor. (Well, you can give the emacsians their shortcuts, if you want.)

The data can later be transmitted to a normal computer using for example Bluetooth or NFC.

Any thoughts on that one?

(Crossposting from Google+.)

On treating your playtesters well

With the kind permission of the original author:

===================
Theory: Finding play testers is hard because most designers don't treat them with respect.

As someone who playtests board/card games, I can say that I'm not willing to play test for most people a second time. They have not done their homework. I have no desire to do it for them.

1) I expect the game designer to have played it solo a few times before bringing it to the group. "Pretend" you don't know what the other person intends to do.
a) Does the game feel like it has interesting choices?
b) Does it feel like the choices matter? (This is often more important than their actually mattering.)
c) Does it play in roughly the right time frame?
d) What happens to players who get behind? (Make a conscious decision.)
If this is too much work for the designer, then why should the playtester spend his time on it? The designer is in effect trading their time for that of the playtesters. I won't playtest for these people again.

2) The designer should know when to stop the playtest.
If the game is clearly broken, what else can they learn right now that is a good payoff per playtester time? It is time to stop.

3) The designer should be open to feedback. For many games, the early feedback can be very negative. Accept that the playtester is trying to help you, even if you don't agree with the comments. Record them anyhow. Looking at the pattern of recorded comments later may help identify the one small change that fixes everything. If, instead, the designer gets defensive or authoritative, they won't test for you again. Clearly you knew better, why did you even ask. Realize that both initial and after significant play opinions can influence how a game is received.

4) When a dimension was identified as broken during game play or in the post mortem, I don't expect to play the game again until it, and any parallel cases in the game, are resolved (fixed, eliminated, etc.). Again, this comes back to respecting the playtesters' time.

5) Realize that playing to break the game IS part of play testing. If there are pathological corner cases, you do want to find them. If you know the game is shaky enough that people should not do this, why are you asking for their help? Either fix the issue first, or be very clear up front. I know X,Y are broken, so we won't use them this game. I'd like to see if Z is working now.