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This is part 3 of the testing-series of posts where I cover White-Box testing (inspired by Microsoft’s upcoming Testing Series of good advise from PAG). You can check out the earlier post here . White-Box testing (Glass Box/Clear Box/Open Box testing) White box testing assumes that the tester can take a look at the code for the application and create test cases which look for any potential failure scenarios. You need to determine the suitable input data for testing of various APIs and the special code paths that need testeing by analyzing the source code for the application. One needs to ensure that the test plans need to be updated before starting with White–Box testing. ...

This is really part II of my testing series (as I have become to call it) - I had an earlier post on Unit Testing . I recently had the opportunity to review some of the new stuff coming out of the Prescriptive Architecture Group at Microsoft and here is some of the interesting things proposed by them. ...

Scott (the author of dotText - the open source bits running this blog), has an interesting question to ask, is Unit Testing important for all to include it in all the edition of Whidbey of only Visual Studio Team Systems. I think this should be a moot point. In my opinion no developer can say he/she is feature complete if they have not done a “unit test”. How can one know if their code does what it is supposed to do? Sure the QA/Test team is there, but their job is to ensure your code meets the functional requirements, but the basic building blocks only a developer knows best and it is their responsibility to ensure that they test it. Sadly, a lot of developers and designers have the attitude of “That is the QA’s job” - unfortunately they could not be further from the truth. I also find developers who do a unit test tend to have less bugs in their code (Note: this is my personal experience and recording, there is no experiment or sampling conducted). Since I am one of the advisor’s for PAG (representing the company I am employed with), I recently got the opportunity to review some of the new testing best practises they have coming out - lots of good common sense stuff - keep a look out for that in the near future. I will be posting some stuff from there here in the next few days too. Anyways, I would love to hear your viewpoint on the whole issue? ...

BBC is reporting that the first ever computer virus spread by mobile phones has been sent to anti-virus firms. No infections have been reported and the worm is harmless but it is proof that mobiles are at risk from virus writers. The worm, known as Cabir, infects phones and devices running the Symbian operating system. Anti-virus firms are divided on whether it will open the floodgate to similar viruses. Because the worm requires Bluetooth technology to travel, it is geographically constrained to a radius of about 30 metres. Then it is dependent on someone having Bluetooth turned on within that range. And as a final blow to its progress, any unsuspecting phone user in the vicinity would have to accept the virus which would be preceded by a warning that the source of the file is unknown. ...

Microsoft has a common sense article that is aimed for most non-technical users on how to help them stop spam. If you already get lots of spam they discuss here how to fight it. The crux of the matter is disclosing your email address. Some spammers get address lists from Web sites where you may have signed up for free offers, ordered something online, or entered a contest. They can also get your address from Internet white pages listings, newsgroups, resumé postings, and chat rooms. Follow these tips whenever you can: ...

Nearly three years ago TechDirt wrote about breakthroughs in atomic entanglement that could lead to advancements in quantum computing and teleportation. It seems that much of that research has continued as two separate groups of researchers have now used entanglement to successfully teleport the quantum state of an atom . As the article points out, the fact that two separate research groups came up with similar results (using slightly different methods) is particularly promising. It is amusing, though, to note that just about every article discussing atomic teleportation feels the need to explain that this is nothing like Star Trek style teleportation. ...

If you want to see how heave your site is then browse over and plug in your url and check it out. Here is how the numbers for this blog came up to: Load Time by Connection SpeedConnection SpeedDownload Time14.4Kbps85.93 seconds28.8Kbps44.96 seconds56Kbps24.84 secondsISDN (128Kbps)13.22 secondsCable (512 Kbps)6.30 secondsT1 (1.44 Mbps)4.82 secondsSDSL (1.544 Mbps)4.76 secondsADSL (2.0 Mbps)4.59 seconds Page ObjectsSizeObject TypeURL137443HTMLhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/amit/4672CSShttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/skins/bahree/style.css2990IMGhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/Images/login_icon.jpg1052IMGhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/Images/atom.gif953IMGhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/images/Comments.gif138IMGhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/images/link.gif130IMGhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/Skins/bahree/images/xml.gif88IMGhttp://www.desigeek.com/weblog/Skins/bahree/images/arrow_on.gif4CSShttp://desigeek.com/weblog/amit/customcss.aspx It also told me what was broken - which means I should take out the time to fix it. Here is a subset of the stuff that is broken: ...

Karan has a very interesting discussion going on Orkut and India. Here is essentially my view on the whole topic: In my personal experience, most Indians that I have met here in USA are full of crap when it comes to India! They have viewpoint hearing that one goes “whaaaat?????” and left scratching their heads. When I dig a little more, it turns out that they have lived all their live in one small town (or a big metro) before they stepped on a plane to come here and that makes up their Indian experience and viewpoint! How pathetic can that be? ...

I was in meetings today with Microsoft and going over some client stuff that I cannot really talk about here. But at this client the “hot backup” is done on a remote NAS over a OC192 line and I was like what the heck is that? Turns out that has a bandwidth of almost 10 gigabytes/sec (9.6 gb/s to be exact) - wow! Imagine all the things one can do with that pipe. Drooool! What is the fastest you have used? Till now I have worked on an OC12 - once this is up this would be my fastest! ...

On a different note than most of my entries here, last weekend I went to an Indian classical music concert by Zakir Hussain and Master Pandit Jasraj and was organized by the Bay Area Performing Arts . The concert was amazing, I have seen Zakir a number of times earlier and as always be was mind blowing. This was the first time though I saw Jasraj and did not know he sang Krishan Bhajans . Though I personally don’t care about the Bhajans but the rags he sang were quite amazing too - especially the ones showing his control over this voice where we went all the way from a very high note to a very flat and dull one (like from a bass). And the special treat were the Jugalbandi’s - one has to attend a Zakir concert just for that - oh what fun! If you find out Zakir is playing in your area I would highly recommend checking it out. If it happens to be the first time you zee Zakir hussain then you are going to be blown away by the whole experience. ...

Not long ago, one of those earnest-freshman puppydogs on the Net declared that there was “no such thing as American culture.” Right. Fish have also been known to doubt the existence of water. The following is a first crack at an ostensive definition of ‘American culture’– things shared by the vast majority (let’s say 90%) of native-born Americans. Many of these won’t sound ‘cultural’ at all to Americans; they’ll sound like just descriptions of the way things are. But each one of them would be contested in one or more non-American cultures. ...

I don’t get it. Anatoly discusses how he (along with other people he quotes) don’t use the debugger in C# or any other managed code and letting the runtime find the exception and let it “deal” with it. Now I don’t know these people and they could probably be correct in the context of the applications they write, but I don’t agree with their viewpoint. Sure there are applications that would not warrant the use of a debugger (like HelloWolrd *grin*), but most of the applications I design and work on are fairly complex and the debugger is a very invaluable tool! Exceptions are very expensive (as discussed here ) and should be used wisely! Of all the features of Whidbey, the one I am most excited about is the huge improvements in the debugger and also how you an extend the debugger with GUI to inspect your complex data types. The point also holds for any managed language and not just .NET. What do you think? ...

Pocket C# is port of C# compiler from DotGNU project to Windows CE. DotGNU contains open-source runtime, compiler, tools and many other things to make free cross-platform .NET environment. I took only compiler and several required tools and ported them with some modifications to WinCE platform. This would allow you to develop and build applications using standard .NET CF and C# right on your pocket device. It’s quite easy, you almost don’t need to do anything manually - just write your code and project file and then build it with one tap. ...

As Paul Dilascia discusses in his article in MSDN Magazine (most of which I am gonna mooch-off here), What is good code? Does good code mean that the program works as it is meant to without bugs? Well if that is your only criteria, then I don’t think so, that is something that is expected. One also needs to look at it internally - as they say beauty is beneath the skin (or something like that anyways). As Paul asks what internal qualities produce perfection (for the application/code)? It does not matter what language or platform you program in - one needs to remember the things that were taught in school when you took your first programming class - simplicity, readability, modularity, layering, design, efficiency elegance and clarity. ...

Bill Gates Testimony This is seriously funny - IE Blues? Do you want to mess with the Admins now? Bush Hotmail ...

If you want to understand the new stuff in the next release of Visual Studio.NET Joe has an article detailing demos that you can plan with. This is a good starting point and covers a lot of areas like: Understanding Code (MDLView) - The first demo is all about how you get up to speed on an existing code base. To emphasise the problem I renamed nearly all the files so they were numbers which brings home the point about not understanding what the code is actually doing. Debugging Code (DebugDemo) - This demo really requires some setup by showing and talking to how information was shown in VS 2003. The main issues with the current display are one, too much information (VS 2003 simply dumps the members of a type in alphabetical order) and two not enough context (e.g. in VS 2003 looking at the list you can’t tell what something is e.g. is it a property, is it public etc?) Writing Code - Writing code has historically been a strong point for Visual Studio and in VS 2005 there are a number of features that make this experience even better. You can also directly download the powerpoint presentation from the for the TechEd session and the demos themselves. ...

This morning with nothing better to do I was browsing (as usual) and came across an interesting site called All Consuming . What are they? Well I asked the same question. Turns out that they watch all weblogs for books that are being discussed and displays the popular ones on an hourly basis. I was surprised to find that they had these entries about this blog. Its interesting to see a pattern on what books are being discussed. e.g. Today the DaVinci Code is discussed one of the most discussed books along with Bill Clinton’s “My Life”. ...

I finally found the time to install and play a little with the new build of Longhorn. It is not too different above the covers than the previous build (PDC Bits), though it *seems* to be a little more stable. One of the first things I found was that SimpleText did not exist anymore - there is another post covering that bit. ...

Incase you did not hear, then which planet are you living on, but Google exposes their offering via a Web Service that you can use to search for … well … stuff. If you have programed on the .NET CF then you know this is quite simple (especially if you program on the “regular” .NET). Incase you have not dabbled in this and are interested in doing something simple then check out this article which steps you thru the simple application. If you are interested in doing some more mobile development then here are a few links for you to check out: ...

This is one of those typical lessons learned when you get too dependend on technology blindly and then you fall flat on your face. Well in my case I have been using Yodlee for about 4+ years now when I was working on a project for etrade.com. If you don’t know what yodlee is, then check out www.yodlee.com - they are actually pretty cool. Yodlee, provides an account aggregration service. So I logon to one place and that gets my financial information in one snapshot from all over - my account details from my banks, credit cards, 401K, utilities, etc. I know my bank (Wellsfargo) also uses this. ...

About a month after releasing the first beta, Mono released the second beta that includes a c# compiler which is CLI compliant and also supports the same PE system as .NET. What is more interesting is that there are two stacks of APIs one for the Unix and its variants and the other is of the .NET Framework (v 1.1) to support ASP.NET including WebForms, WebServices, among other things. ...

If you have played with both the PDC and the WinHEC build of Longhorn (Build # 4074) and in your small applications if you had a class called SimpleText - that code would now give an exception in the new build with the error “Class not found”. So out of curiosity I asked on the newsgroups what was up with it and found out that Microsoft has consolidated their three classes to handle text to two - which help solve some of the confusion. Filipe Fortes who is the Avalon PM also discusses it in a blog here . ...

There has been a lot of talk recently hearting up the wires in cyberworld on Closures and c#. One of the question that some have asked is what the heck are closures? Well I don’t know what all the excitment is all about, but closures are nothing but what is also called the Anonymous Methods. There now that you know it, go do something productive! BTW, anonymous methods are cool and with the combination of iterators you can go pretty interesting things. Check out the latest msdn article for a quick read. ...

This is part 1 (if you will) of a couple of posts. I am surprised how very little most people know how the GC actually works. If you are reading this and are going to be interviewed by me, this is one of my favourite questions. *grin* This is based on an interesting post I found long ago I think on gotdotnet (sorry I forgot who the author was, I’ll try and google it and see if I can find the link to the original post). ...

Karan (see the Blogs I read section for his weblog) pointed me to this and I think it is pretty cool. IronPython is a new implementation of the Python language targeting the CLR. It compiles python programs into IL that can run on either .NET or Mono (now that is cool). This produces a standard assembly that other code can reference. It would be an interesting exercises to see the IL it produces and see if we can infer anything from that. ...