Željko Filipin's Blog on Software and Testing

Interesting question appeared today at wtr-general mailing list.

my application has sent an email to outlook. i want watir to open outlook, open the mail and get the mail data like from text and so on.

I also have to test my application to see if it sends correct e-mails. So I knew the answer.

You do not have to open Outlook to see your mail. You can read you e-mail from ruby.

- receive e-mail – Net::POP3
- send e-mail – Net::SMTP
- create (before sending) and parse e-mail (from file, after receiving) – TMail

Net::POP3 and Net::SMTP are included in Ruby. TMail needs installation. I had a problem with TMail installation, and I contacted author. He recommended this procedure, and now it works.

ruby setup.rb config --without-ext
ruby setup.rb setup
ruby setup.rb install

My developer just told me a joke. He said it is an old one, but I have never heard it before.

Software is like a sausage. You lose appetite when you see how it is made.

A few weeks ago, my developer resolved a case that was opened for two years and one day. It was minor bug (priority 4), but that does not matter. Our application has changed so much in that two years that, of course, it was not reproducible. But that does not matter, either.

What matters is – that bug was open for over a two years.

At that time, I just have read Joel Spolsky’s The Joel Test: 12 Steps to Better Code. There is question: “Do you fix bugs before writing new code?” No. To be honest, we did not have a feature freeze for a while.

Isn’t it demotivating to know that bug that you have reported would not be looked at for a while. When will it be resolved? Better not to think about it. I pointed that to my developer, and he promised that he would do his best.

Since then, he was closing many bugs. Just this morning, he said that he has resolved all bugs with priorities 1, 2 and 3 (showstopper, critical and major). I immediately checked our bug tracking software (all testers know that developers cannot be trusted ). Then, I have built the latest version of our application and verified that all bugs are resolved.

There are still over one hundred open bugs, but they are all minor and trivial (priorities 4 and 5). I think that we did not have this situation since I started working here. Over two years.

I have a strange feeling now. I am so motivated to find new bugs. I have noticed some strange behaviour in our application, but I did not have time to look into it. Until know.

There is always one more bug*.