All wisdom is rooted in learning to call things by the right name. When things are properly identified, they fall into natural categories and understanding becomes orderly. --ConfuciusI found this gem when I flipped my "Little Zen Calendar" to February 22, 2003. It immediately reminded me of the difficulty in our field to get agreement on names for things. But to be able to meet Confucius' standard, we first need to figure out what the categories are.
-Danny R. Faught, Software Alchemist
faught@tejasconsulting.com
-- http://tejasconsulting.com/
-- +1-817-294-3998
I've published two issues of Open Testware Reviews now, and I'm working on the third. I'm excited that I've attracted a worldwide subscriber base, with subscribers now from the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Japan. If you're interested in freeware and open source test tools but don't know where to start, check it out. I've done detailed reviews of OpenSTA and ALLPAIRS, plus surveys of test drivers and defect tracking tools. If you're interested but not ready to commit yet, you can sign up to receive notices of which featured tools are covered in future issues.
For my technical readers, note that my article, "Diving in Test-First," is now posted on my web site. I describe an iteration of test-first development, and I make it more challenging by using a 10 year-old legacy program as the source base.
I had fun doing my perl scripting tutorial at the Software Test Automation Conference in California. I've been asked to do it again at the Software Test Automation Conference in Boston, August 19-23, 2003. Because this is still an experimental type of tutorial for the conference, I'll be revamping it yet again, ripping out the fluff and adding more examples and more code.
I've gotten a trickle of interest from various parts of the world in a remote introductory testing course, where you participate online and via a conference call. I've decided that it would work best for the first time as a single three-hour session. I don't yet have enough people committed, though, so let me know if you or your team needs training and can't afford to travel.
I don't think I have a tendency to dwell on the past. Yet an employer
that I thought I had parted company with years ago always seems to be popping
up in my thoughts. The company is Convex Computer Corporation, the pioneer
of "affordable supercomputing," where I worked from 1992 to 1995. Convex
as an institution is gone, but much to my amazement, its culture is very much
alive. I'd like to pay a tribute both to the demise of the institution, and
to the unique spirit that lives on.
What happened to the institution? After outliving practically every other competitor in the market that they created, Convex ran out of money and sought a merger with Hewlett-Packard, which was completed officially in December 1995. Cultural changes were inevitable, but mercifully, most of the changes came slowly. The first big shock for me was when management removed all Convex paraphernalia and pictures from past events from the walls in the hallways. They laid them all out in the company meeting room and told us to take what we wanted, and served ice cream to "celebrate."
I consider the next big milestone to be the end of the Friday parties, which happened after I left what was then Hewlett-Packard. Convex had a long-standing tradition of bringing beer kegs into the main breakroom on Friday afternoons, along with other drinks and snacks. I vividly remember the one time my wife attended. She stood there, shocked, and said something like "My God, they're all geeks!" I did some of my most inspired test tool development after the Friday parties. I'm told that the last Friday party was Friday, the 13th of April, 2001, canceled for the sake of cost-cutting.
Then on September 23, 2002, I got a disturbing announcement stating
that the entire software development lab I had worked for was shut down.
There are still a few ex-Convex employees working for H-P at the old Convex
site in Richardson, Texas, and definitely a number of Convex folks who
have relocated to other H-P locations. But it's hard to find much of the
Convex legacy that's left at H-P.
Nowadays, Convex lives on in the people who were there. As I wrote this, I received an April Fool's joke in an email on the "ex-convex" mailing list. April Fool's jokes are a prominent component of the hacker culture, and the Convex culture has a lot in common with hacker culture.
I got a blast from the past when a political discussion recently broke out on the ex-convex list. It was a full-scale, flame-throwing, no holds barred debate. It was old friends, who saw no need to tread lightly. It was the same sort of discussion that used to take place on the internal Usenet newsgroups at Convex, and several people were amused to see that the group was still up to the task.
I didn't realize how many Convex connections I'd maintained until I sat down to write about them. I recently sent congratulations to Ron, a former manager of mine, who decided to retire rather than try to find another job after the shutdown. I worked on a project with Prathibha and Hema, testers I had worked with at Convex and who landed contracting positions with one of my clients. Matthew, another ex-Con (the affectionate shorthand for an ex-Convex employee), is an employee on that same project. I spent a week at a training course last year with Daryl, who was my first team lead when I started at Convex. I worked on a writing project with ex-Cons Eric and Martin. I met Mark at a local networking event. I touched based with Orion and Darrell when passing through San Francisco last month. I met Prasad and his wife for a social visit when they came through town last December. I consulted with Peter about writing this article. That's just a sampling.
I don't try to seek out my former Convex employees any more than anyone else in my network. But they're still a core part of my network more than three years after I left H-P, and seven years after Convex officially went kaput. Countless times, I've heard ex-Cons say that Convex is still their favorite work experience, even after they worked several different places since then.
I asked Jason Eckhardt recently why Convex was his favorite job. He started as a co-op student, writing software tests for the compilers. He says,
"I grew a little bored and decided to not only find the defects, but then go isolate the assembly code that caused the wrong answer. Then I thought I could accelerate the codegen effort by just fixing the compiler bugs instead of merely finding them.... I don't know any other place where I could have gone from junior co-op to compiler developer (on one of the world's most advanced compilers, no less) in such a short time and with amazing support from my supervisors and peers--including the 'compiler guys' who were remarkably tolerant of me getting into 'their' code before they even knew me."
He also mentioned a supportive manager, a highly cohesive and friendly team, a tremendous amount of technical growth, and the freedom to spend the time to research the right solution to a problem. Individually, none of these things are terribly unusual to see in a company, but perhaps they're not often seen all in one place.
Was Convex my favorite job? Actually, my all-time favorite job was as a temporary laborer with the Moving and Hauling department at the University of North Texas. You want a sense of accomplishment? Move 300-pound desks upended on a dolly single-handedly down three flights of stairs. I felt a real, concrete sense of accomplishment from that. But as far as bit-twiddling goes, Convex ranks right up there. After all, I haven't talked to anyone from Moving and Hauling since I left that assignment. If they were to shut down the Moving and Hauling department, I doubt I'd shed a tear. Plus Moving and Hauling didn't have any supercomputers for me to play with. So I save a special place in my memories for Convex.
Prasad Tammana responds to the February/March feature:
Congratulations on the 2 year anniversary. It's interesting to see that your logo is the longhorn. Not sure if you know that longhorn is the internal code name for the next version of Windows. You sure are moving away from being a UNIX buff and seeing the light :-)I prefer to think of it as Microsoft getting some culture. ;-)
Kurt Kyle asked me:
Do you have any ideas as to where I can acquire a used Empirix Hammer IT, or equivalent?That's a very interesting question, and I don't have a good answer. I often buy used items in order to cut costs, but I hadn't thought about doing that for test tools (perhaps a side of effect of focusing on free tools lately). I suspect that when large companies no longer need one of their test tools, they just put them on the shelf. I bet that smaller companies would be more motivated in recouping some of their investment when they retire a tool. Licensing issues are also likely to hamper a secondary test tools market, though. I don't know if that's the case with the Hammer IT hardware and software.
If any of my readers have seen any kind of test tool resale market, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
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