Historical errata for Explore It!

“Software is like a glacier” - shouldn’t it be iceberg not glacier?

Missing word:
Chapter 1.1, paragraph 2 in “Executing” section - “This is crucial: until you execute your test, you don’t what follow-up…” - seems like this should be “don’t know what follow-up…”.

“accounts must accounts must” in first paragraph of the “Risks” section

I don’t know if it’s an error or not, but my kindle edition version doesn’t have page numbers (or the ability to move to a particular page). I think I emailed the mobi to my kindle email account but can’t recall for sure.

On the & (ampersand) character in XML - I think the issue may be that ampersand by itself isn’t valid XML and must be followed by amp; (or some other sneaky way to get it in there:). Of course, what you were testing might have had other things going on.

you don’t what follow-up questions will occur to you to investigate.

I think this should be

You don’t know what follow-up questions will occur to you to investigate

Page 4 – Section 1.1

I think the definition by James Bach has had a slight alteration which may make it easier for readers to understanding.

Michael Bolton makes the point here: h t t p www.developsense.com/resources.html

Sometimes, when we want to save time, we refer to exploratory testing more concisely: “parallel test design, test execution, and learning”.

I thought the concept of SBTM was the idea of both Jon and James?

h t t p //www.satisfice.com/sbtm/

One practice session I use when coaching ET is to ask people to write down what they think testing is – then ask them to re-read the chapter and see if they picked up on the point you made about tested=checked+explored

There is still a lot of debate on if Robert Edwin Peary was the first to the North Pole.

In the “Executing” section, “This is crucial: until you execute your test, you don’t what follow-up questions will occur to you to investigate”, probably wants to be, “This is crucial: until you execute your test, you don’t KNOW what follow-up questions will occur to you to investigate.”

In section 1.4, last sentence, “The sessions provide a periodic stopping points for…”, drop the ‘a’.

Section 2.1, first paragraph, “…from a starting point near to St. Louis, Missouri…”, drop the ‘to’.

Another great way to find “moonwalking bears” is to use screen capture software, so you can rerun the test looking for other things. It is also provides relevant screenshots for any bugs found, as well as being a way to show stakeholders, team members etc examples of the explorations.

As a footnote for the UNIC example, is it worth mentioning cygwin as a way of getting UNIX commands on WIndows? Is ther a Mac equivalent?

I’d include a word of warning that some testability features may need to be disabled in the released version of the product, that they may only be appropriate for test. I had a product once that accidentally issued a new release with log everything on by default, leading to massive logs.
Do you need to include “testability” in a section heading making it easier to find in the contents?

Does everyone know what an elevator pitch is these days? Is it worth a footnote?

after “different users interact with your software”, I’d include some words about including the relevant persona when reporting bugs, reinforcing the bug report by saying this is the type of person who would do this action with the bug.

Paired testing seems to buried pretty deep in the book, and doesnt appear in the TOC (being under “Exploring is everyones job”, and “Paired in interview”). When you do talk about it (even though its paired programming), its a great argument for its importance for shared discovery and learning. You didnt think you should have reinforced it more in an opening or closing section? (or at least include plain “paired testing” in the TOC?

“If you are working with system you don’t know well, and where there is very little documentation, you may need to use tools to help you uncover the parts of the system.” is missing a very little “a” perhaps?

“if zero of your FaceBook friends” => Facebook as earlier on page.

“800-867-5309” even “866-867-5309”
should be
“866-867-5309” even “866-867-5309”

This is not an error that comes from the book. I think it’s more of a problem that comes from integrating different programs which uncover problems in programming languages.

Chapter: Exploring When There is No User Interface.

I have never written JavaScript before so I decided to give it a go. I use Komodo and open the HTML-file in Firefox. Before I bought the book I read the example pdf’s here and copy/pasted the following sorting function into Komodo edtior:

[7,
3,
11].sort(
function
(a,b){
return
a-b})

When I open the file in Firefox I surprisingly get:
7,3,11

I think it is notable that the result is in the same order as written in the editor.

But when I fix it to more readable code:
[7,3,11].sort(function(a,b){return a-b})

It gets right:
3,7,11

How can this happen? Can’t the language handle scattered code or is there something odd with this editor or am I, which I think would be excessive to say, violating the code?

Maybe there should be a codeline checker or something that prevents things like this to happen, or am I way off?

“Do you intentionally and consciously mix up how you drive your way THOUGH the application?”

Shouldn’t it be THROUGH instead?

Within “Step 5”, the sentence just before the examples: “…could include such ideas such as these:”
You can remove the first “such”.

When attempting to print the entire document, it fails when it gets in the queue to page 27 with a fatal error causing the document to close.
Printing individually page 26, 27, 28 and further works.

I believe the word “wait” in the following sentence should instead be “await”.

Actual text:

“Any number of surprises and adventures wait you (including bugs).”

Should read:

“Any number of surprises and adventures await you (including bugs).”

In section 2.7 the phrase “off-tangent” appears. Using “off track” or another pithy variation of “off on a tangent” might convey the idea more clearly as “off-tangent” is somewhat dubious in its acceptance as a valid expression. (See english.stackexchange.com/questions/111558/off-on-a-tangent-vs-off-tangent)

The intention of the following sentence is ambiguous:

“Finally, Boris is likely to stumble over issues related to newer technologies.”

In the context of Boris’ persona, it seems unlikely he would “stumble over” issues related to newer technologies. To me, that suggests he would uncover an issue and have trouble rectifying it. More likely, it seems the intent of this sentence would be better expressed by replacing “over” with “across”.

“Finally, Boris is likely to stumble across issues related to newer technologies.”

This sentence now suggests that Boris is likely to be one of the first users to identify an issue in newer technologies because he is on the cutting edge and thus likely to be among the first to adopt the technology.