Software Development
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What Are the Worst Passwords of 2017? The more things change, the more they stay the same. For the fourth straight year, the top spots in the annual worst passwords of the year list issued by password management company SplashData are unchanged. People apparently still use “123456” and “password.” |
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Interface Grief: Is It Agile, or Just Bad Software Engineering?There are people who will use "being agile" to justify software engineering practices that could be perceived as lazy or even bad. The specifications are going to change, they say, so it would be a waste to engineer more to begin with than the minimum viable product. What's expediency and what's just poor practice? | 
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Expanding AI for Earth in 2018 In an ambitious undertaking, Microsoft is pledging $50 million over the next five years to expand Microsoft’s AI for Earth program and put artificial intelligence technology in the hands of individuals and organizations around the world who are working to protect our planet. |
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A Tester’s Guide to Choosing a Programming LanguageMany testers want to learn a programming language, but how should they decide which one? Justin Rohrman suggests finding an authentic problem to solve and moving from there to determine which language would be best. You can also ask developer coworkers for suggestions and help—take advantage of available resources. | 
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Growing Security Intelligence: DARPA Proposes Plants as Sensors The new Advanced Plant Technologies program established by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, will explore ways to use plants' natural responsiveness to their environment as a military sensor to detect and report on the presence of threats such as explosive devices or radioactivity. |
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Think through System Changes to Anticipate Quality IssuesWhen you replace or significantly modify components of a larger system, too frequently we focus on whether the code we are building functions correctly. This is important, but it’s also short-sighted. It’s easy to introduce errors because we are changing interactions. Coding bugs are only one quality problem. |
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Integrating Code in Agile Software Development: Start with the Goal in MindAgile software development works because of continuous feedback at various levels, and the most important form of feedback is working software. One way to achieve rapid feedback is to integrate and deploy code frequently. Rather than starting with the process, first decide what "frequently" should mean for your team. | 
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Using Feature Flags to Boost Testing and DeploymentA feature flag is a configuration setting that lets you turn a given feature on or off. There is no need for a feature to be complete before you can start testing—as soon as the first piece of code is merged, you can turn the flag on in your test environment and begin. This also reduces risk. Do you use feature flags? | 
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