An interview with a Bug–Part II (The Return of TGB)

It is said that History repeats itself. It has been more than two years when I interviewed the TGB. If any of you have missed that interview by any chance they can read it here.

That was the last time when TGB was seen. After that interview the TGB got fix and we were sure that we would never see him again. But guess what – we all were wrong. The TGB has returned and this time he is more powerful. This time he is going to blow our minds who are involved in the project – the testers, developers, team leads, managers, business managers, client and everybody who is directly or indirectly involved with the project. It seems that we are in deep soup.

Luckily like last time, this was again me who found him but this time I was not happy. First, my job was on stake now and second, the way he was looking at me like making fun of me. But, once again I was ready with my questions and tape recorder for another interview which I never imagined two years back when I interviewed him first.

Me: Hi TGB, It’s good to see you happy and healthy. Welcome back.

TGB: Don’t lie to me. You don’t seem happy at all seeing me again and moreover I never went anywhere so why are you welcoming me?

I was staring at him. He was not changed at all. He still hates me like I hate him.

Me: How did you escape last time? We all thought you were dead.

TGB: In software, the bugs are never died. They just go to unconscious state and wake up again when they get the chance. You only believe in what you see. If you don’t find any of us then you make assumptions that we don’t exists and release the so called bug-free software.

Me: What… By any chance, are you studying Psychology?

TGB: Yes, Psychology of ABS Members

Me: Very bad joke. Anyway, I don’t make any assumptions about your existence.

TGB: That’s only why you always find me. I hate you, seriously.

Me: Even I don’t love you and now when you have been found once again, I hate you more. You have put my job on stake. They are going to kick me out from here.

TGB: No, They should not. You are forgetting something. It was not you who confirmed my death. It was other ABS member of your team so you can have narrow escape.

Me: You mean Retesting. Yes, you are correct. It was not me.

There was silence of few seconds. Both of us were thinking. I broke the silence finally.

Me: He is a good tester. I am wondering how he has missed you.

TGB: You tell me.

Me: How can I tell u?

TGB: Think. You must know.

Me: He didn’t retest at all.

TGB: No, Infect he has retested twice.

Me: Then he might not know how to find you.

TGB: Correct and Incorrect as well.

Me: means

TGB: He knew only one way to find me which you mentioned in your report.

Me: and there was other ways?

TGB: Yes. Nobody knew how to find me before you did last time. You have found me because you were not following their steps book.

Me: You mean test cases?

TGB: Oh!!! You call them test cases and what you call such ABS members who follow these test cases?

Me: Testers…. more precisely Scripted Testers.

TGB: Oh!!! We call them ABS Robots and we really love them.

Me: why?

TGB: Because they only see what they are supposed to see. So, most of time they are not able to find us hiding in different areas of software.

Me: Can you explain it bit more?

TGB: Look, these ABS Robots try to find out using the steps book. These steps books are written based on the requirement by the client which says what a system should do and what it shouldn’t. But designed system is too complex than the specified one. The requirement never explain the grey area which lies between and beyond the Do and Don’ts of the software and that’s the place where most of us live in colonies.

Me: Hmmm. So what do you think what we should do?

TGB: I suggest you to continue testing the same way. This will help us to grow. Let us also enjoy the life.

Me: I understand your view but this is not possible. For your information the things are getting changed now. Now we have robust training mechanism for testers. The new testers are going to Context driven testing schools where they learn the martial arts with bugs like you. Few of testers are also practising exploratory testing in our team. Mark my words TGB – This time you are not going to come back.

TGB: WTF!!! You will not let us live happily.

Me: That’ true. If you are happy then we can’t.

TGB: So, you mean my time is near?

Me: Yes, but this time it is going to be too costly for us.

TGB:

Me: Why you are laughing?

TGB: Dear friend, it is not going to be that easy. Now it is time to start rounds of long meetings, people will be blamed for missing me at earlier stage, you will be blamed for not ensuring earlier that I was dead and finally in the end, the one who missed me at retesting will be found responsible for this blunder and you know the rest

Me: Yes, you are right and it reminds me we have a team meeting in 10 minutes. I will come to see you once more before you are dead. Do you have any message for aspiring testers?

TGB: Yes, I request them to follow Steps Book testing so that we can live healthy and happy life. After all, Life is about living happy.

And from next time I am not going to give you any more free interviews.

Me: Bye TGB. See you soon.

TGB: Bye.

Disclaimer: The original interview is edited because of foul and abusive language :)

Is something wrong here?

Can you see the problem/s with the following error message?

A Feature which have become Bouquet of Bugs

Recently, I was testing an online shopping site – just for fun, nothing official. There I saw a feature called as “Tell A Friend”.  I found this feature useful in first glance. During shopping, if you see any product which you find usable for your friend and you think your friends might be interested, just forward info about the product in the mailbox of your friend. You just have to write name & email address of your friend. I think this is great idea to make new customers.

So, I thought to take my hands on this feature but I was highly disappointed when I used this feature. In hurry to introduce the new feature, the site managers kept a bouquet of bugs on the site. Let’s come with me to see the dissection of this feature with me.

Oh… I forgot to tell you the store name. It’s Zappos.com. First, some introduction with Zappos:

Zappos.com is an online shoe and clothing shop. Since its founding in 1999, Zappos has grown to be the largest online shoe store. Zappos did "almost nothing" in sales for 1999, but grossed over USD$800 million in merchandise sales in 2007 and grossed over $1 billion in 2009.

On Zappos.com I selected a product to see its description. The product seemed good to me and I was sure one of my friends would be interested in this product. I decided to forward the details of the product to my friend. So I clicked on “Tell A Friend” button available on the product page.

So I was on “Tell A Friend” Window.

After seeing this window I thought to play with this.

I clicked on Send button to see what would happen if values were not filled. On clicking send I saw two error messages. The error messages were:

• ·         You  didn’t specify an email to send to
• ·         You need to supply an email

Displaying an error message is not a formality. They could phrase the error messages in much better way.  Also they displayed the error messages in reverse order of the fields on the form. In the above screenshot you can see that the sender’s email address field appears before receiver’s email address. The error message should also display in the same order. This is not a rule but this is always expected.

From error messages it was clear that sender’s name is not mandatory here. Just one questions from all my readers – How many of you know email addresses of your all friends?

As a friend, I know all my friends by their name and not by their email addresses. So, I believe Sender’s name should be mandatory here.

After this I checked for the validations on the fields.

I filled numerals values in sender’s name, email and receiver’s email address fields.

Clicked on send button. The message had been sent.

As you can see there is no validation on sender’s name, email & receiver’s email address. The message had been sent. I didn’t know which poor devil was going to get this mail.

I have doubt that some professional developer has developed this window. It seems any school going kid has done the job. Even they are also aware of these validations.

Now let’s see the max length validation.

I used Perl Clip for generating the string of one million characters and pasted the string in each field.

No surprise, each field has accepted one million characters. Now I wanted to see what would happen if I click on Send button. So I did the job.

I had doubt that this message would ever go and guess what, I was right.

If they had put max length validation for each field, you have not to see this error. From here, I was sure that I was going to get many bugs in this feature.

This time I thought to select the checkbox to send a personalize message with the product details. So I clicked on check box. It displayed one more field along with Captcha verification.

I clicked on send button again without filling up any data in any field.

As you can see, It had given the same error messages. I was surprised why it didn’t show any error message for personalize message or Captcha. On looking down I saw that marked checkbox was unmarked. So you see on page refresh the data was lost.

Again, I filled up the complete form

and clicked Send button. See, what I got here.

 

Now, this was the biggest joke. The Captcha verification had been provided but application was unable to check the Captcha. Then, what it was doing here? Moreover, instead of fixing the error, the application was suggesting me to send the message without personalize message.

While sending the product details I wanted to tell my friend that why I have chosen this product for him but I couldn’t do that.

As application was unable to send a personalize message, it had also unmarked the checkbox itself, so I decided to send the product details without personalize message. I clicked on send button again.

What?????

It was still looking for Captcha.

To check behind the curtains I clicked on checkbox.

OMG!!!!

Text message was still there. Captcha also had been refreshed.  It means I couldn’t send product details until I remove the personalize message and Captcha text.

One funny thing I noted here: When Captcha text was incorrect, it has given the right error message but when correct Captcha text was entered earlier it was unable to process.

I was unable to understand whether they are making my job easy or tough. I could send direct mail to my friend much faster rather than using this add-on.

Next, I opened the “Tell A Friend” in Mozilla tab as you can see in the following image.

I wanted to see on clicking Cancel button whether it would close the single tab or all tabs. So I clicked on Cancel button. I was expecting tab to be closed but nothing happened.

So, I filled the data in the field and click on Send button. The message was sent.

I clicked on Close button but as usual nothing happened.

Finally I decided to close the window myself and never tried to open it again. I was frightened with “Tell A Friend”.

Before finishing, I just have one request – Just try to reduce the tasks of a user instead of multiplying them. They have lots of things to do in life. Before releasing, please make it sure that application doesn’t have such kinds of stupid bugs.

Please choose one of the following actions.

Recently, while unzipping a movie file with WinZip I found the following error message:

Did you find something weird?

The message requests to choose one of the actions from the list but they forgot to display the list of actions.

Any Comment......

Navigating the Quirks: A Light-Hearted Look at Gmail's User Experience Blunders

I would like to dedicate this post to Santhosh Tuppad. It was Santhosh's post and the comments on the post which gave me idea to write this post. The post is going to heart break some Google fans but I think now they should accept that Google is also fallible.

Mission: To display the stupid mistakes to Google devotees in Gmail Registration form.
Time: 0.5 Hrs

How should I change the language here?

Scenario: I am a common user and I don’t have internet access at home so I go to cyber café to use the internet services. On such a public computer, I opened the GMail and found the following screen:

I don’t know Hindi so I am unable to read the content on the screen. How could I change the language to English?

Perhaps, Google forgot to provide the Change Language dropdown here.

GMail Help – Most Stupid Mistake

Scenario: I am using the GMail in Hindi and clicked on ‘Can’t access your account?’ link (Written in Hindi Translation) and redirected to following page:

 Somebody must tell Google that upper right side should be towards upper side of the page and not at bottom of the page.

Now I have doubt on Google’s direction sense. How could I believe on Google Earth now?

Where is the play captcha image?

I am wondering where the play captcha image for this captcha is.

 Play Captcha image: The wheelchair icon with captcha, on clicking you'll be presented with an interesting voice version of the captcha. This is generally used by physically disabled people.

Where is the Refresh button with Captcha image?

Scenario: I am unable to understand the letters in the captcha image. What should I do here?

Should I submit the incorrect word and try again for the new captcha, there is not guarantee that letters in new captcha will be readable

Or Should I refresh the page which will cause the lost of information that I already filled up.

Sorry, we are unable to present username suggestions at this time.

See the screenshot below:

There could be various reasons for this message:
1. GMail server might be busy with any female server :D
2. Its lunch time. :D
3. GMail server may be using the loo :D

Actually, GMail server suggests username on the basis of First name and Last Name entered by user and username can be in English Language only. Here, I have entered Hindi letters and he couldn’t process the request so instead of displaying its inability to suggest username, it has given this error message.

Incorrect Hindi Writing

Neither I had time to search them all nor do I have any spellchecker for Hindi Language so I have mentioned only one mistake in the screenshot. There might be more mistakes in Hindi Spellings.

 The word should be written as ऊपर and not उपर

Displaying Error message without wrong Input

When I clicked on Check availability button, it displayed me a captcha with a field to enter the characters in the captcha and an error message which says

“The characters you entered didn't match the word verification. Please try again.”

When I didn't enter any word then why they are saying that I have entered incorrect word. This message should appear if I enter the incorrect characters.

Relevant Information is not available on Time

I have filled up the password with the characters which are not allowed by GMail. It displayed me the following error after submitting the form:

The following characters are allowed in your password: a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and common punctuation characters.

If password characters were not valid then why didn’t it displayed the error when I tabbed from the choose password field to next field i.e. re-enter password.

If it has displayed the error at right time I could save a lot of time.

I hope GMail server is not allergic to the user name which I have selected.

In the screenshot, see the distance between the field and error message. It seems that GMail server is allergic to the selected username and that’s why the error message going far away every time I click check availability button.

I am not sure but the reason might be: Whenever user clicks on ‘Check Availability’ button, it generates same error message. To avoid the duplication of error messages, the developer had hid the repeating error message.

The funny thing is when these kind of stupid mistakes are mentioned by any passionate tester who is doing it without any greed, few people got offended. According to them “No one will die and no two countries will go to war.” Believe me if we tester start to keep this point in mind, we don’t need UI / Look and feel testing then.

It took just 30 minutes to find the above issues and I am sure if any tester devotes his some time he can find more issues in Google products.

Trust the Google but with open eyes.

Emotional Bug

How do you feel when someone laughs on you while you are installing an application and unsuccessful every time?

You will get irritated by this, right.

Either developers at yahoo don’t think so or they have missed an emotional bug. You might be surprising with the term Emotional bug. Actually I have coined the term Emotional bug.

The bugs which can hurt the feelings of a user can be called as Emotional Bug.

Let me display you an example which I found. I was trying to install the yahoo messenger but due to some technical issues, I was unable to install it successfully. On completing the installation process, I got the following message.

Did you notice the image of emoticon on the message box? It’s a smiling emoticon for unsuccessful installation. It seems they are happy about the unsuccessful installation.

This might not be an issue for many of you. Most of you may think this is just an image but “Images are more expressive than words.” What say?

An interview with a Bug

I always want to interview the great testers to know the secret of their great testing skill, to know the way how they perform testing, to know how all they became masters in the field. In short I want to know the recipe of their success as a tester but never got a chance. The reason was I never approached them as I always have a doubt that they will refuse my request as my blog is not popular like the other sites in which their interviews have been published. Even my blog doesn’t have regular readers. This fear never let me approach to ask them for interview and the wish could not fulfill.

But my dream came true. It was different from what I thought but I got a chance to interview. Although he is not a celebrity but he plays very important part in success of a tester. Dear friends, I got chance to interview a Bug. Yes, a Bug.

His name was ‘The Great Bug’, would be abbreviated as ‘TGB’ further. I am using past tense for TGB as he is no more and has been fixed (or ‘dead’) by development team but I promised him before reporting that I would tell his story to the world. So let me present the story of ‘TGB’ in his own words:

Me: Why you are named as 'The Great Bug'?

TGB: I am the first bug of the project. I have seen many generations of bugs. Hundreds of bugs have come & fixed but I am still there. The Sixth version of the project is going on and I am still here. So my follower gave me this name with respect. They believe me as the best bug.

Me: What kind of Bug you are?
TGB: I am a Bohr Bug. Do you know about Bohr Bug?

Me: No, but I would like to know.
TGB: A Bohr bug is a bug that makes itself apparent consistently under a well-defined (but possibly unknown) set of conditions. The Bohr bugs include the easiest bugs to fix, but also bugs that are hard to find and fix and remain in the software during the operational phase. These kinds of bugs are often present in parts of source code that are not invoked very often and thus might remain undetected for an extended period of time, and are sometimes termed as 'Ghost in the code'.

The common example is a program which always fails when you divide by zero.

Me: that’s interesting! What are the other kinds of bugs are there?
TGB: There are Heisenbug, Mandelbug & Schroedinbug and many more.

Me: Would you tell us about them, so that we can classify a bug next time we find.
TGB: hmmm..... I don't see any harm in it for our bug family. Ok, I would tell you about the bug classification.

(i) Heisenbug: Heisenbug is a kind of bug that disappears or alters its behavior when one attempts to probe or isolate it.

A common example is a bug that occurs in a release-mode compile of a program, but not when researched under debug-mode.

These bugs are antonym of Bohr Bugs.

(ii) Mandelbug: A Mandelbug is a kind of bug whose underlying causes are so complex that its behavior appears chaotic.

For example, a fault in an algorithm's implementation can lead to an erroneous computation for specific values of a program variable—a case of fault activation causing an error. The software can use this incorrect result internally for further calculations, in which case the error propagation leads to additional errors. A failure occurs only when the system uses one of these incorrect calculations in a way that influences a perceivable system behavior, or when error propagation causes a failure occurrence.

(iii) Schroedinbug: A design or implementation bug in a program that doesn't manifest until someone reading source or using the program in an unusual way notices that it never should have worked, at which point the program promptly stops working for everybody until fixed. Though this sounds impossible, it happens; some programs have harbored latent schroedinbugs for years.

For example, a database program may have initially worked on a small number of records, including test data used during development, but broke once the amount of data reached a certain limit, without this cause being at all intuitive. A programmer without knowing the cause, and who didn’t bother to consider the normal uptick in the database size as a factor in the breakage, could label the defect a schroedinbug.

Me: Why do bug exists?
TGB: It’s your question or it is your problem :)
Me: It’s just a question about your existence.
TGB: hmmm…. there are many reasons of our existence like
(i) Communication Gap between client, management & team members
(ii)Complexity of the project
(iii) Pressure to complete the time within strict time frame
(iv) Continuous change in requirements
(v) Programming errors
(vi) Poor or Incorrect Documentation etc.

Me: How did you come in the world?
TGB: Do you want to know the complete story?
Me: Yes
TGB: Well, about three years ago Mr. Client got an idea to automate his business. He came to meet Business Manager of company to apply his concept. They had long meetings discussing about their new project. They were very exciting about the project. During this excitement, they forgot a very important concept and I was seeded in the project.
Even in the designing phase, they did not find the glitch in the project and when programmer were writing the code, they gave me life and since then I am here.

Me: So, it's a developer who has given you birth?
TGB: No, My original parents are Client & Business Manager of the project. They are responsible for my existence.

Me: That is really interesting! If it’s true what you are saying then why the developers are always claimed for bugs?
TGB: The developers are the weakest in all of them who is responsible for our origin and its human nature to blame the weakest one. Not all bugs are originated by developers. Most of the bug already present in the project when developer is introduced in the project.

Me: Do you think people will agree with your point of view?
TGB: I am not here to make them to believe me. Everybody has its own conception. This is my truth and it is up to them whether they are agree with me or not.

Me: Do you have a family?
TGB: Yes, I have family. In fact, in earlier period of the project I have a big family but with time they all have been caught by ABS members. Now, there are just few people in the family. I miss them all whom I lost with time :(

Me: I am sorry!
TGB: It’s perfectly alright. So don't feel sorry.

Me: How you spend time with your family?
TGB: As I told you, I had a big family. We use to party all the time. We always enjoy our togetherness and our success. We never think about our future, neither we use to look back on our past. We enjoy the present.
Me: it means you know how to live a happy life :)

Me: I am really curious to know why you were not identified by anyone till now.
TGB: :) It was not an easy task my dear but I always succeeded to hide myself. Actually I disguised myself as a feature of the project. Whenever anybody tried to find me, he could see the feature only.



Me: you talked about some ABS members, what is ABS?
TGB: ABS – Anti Bug Squad. ABS members are really heartless people, they are the people who find us, report to Developers and make sure that we all get killed. (Read as 'fixed')

Me: you mean tester!
TGB: We don't care what you people say them. We call them ABS members.

Me: You know I am also an ABS member!
TGB: Yes, but I am just saying the truth. Due to you heartless people our family could not grow. How can you ask developers to kill us?

Me: This is our job. Company is paying us for finding and reporting about you. We help in development of quality product. Our goal is to find bugs in project, to find bugs as early as possible and make sure they all get fixed.

TGB: huh! Quality.... To hell with your Quality :x

Me: It was really a nice interview and I hope whoever read your interview will have the sympathy with you.
TGB: I don't want sympathy. I just want people know about us. That’s all.......

Me: Thanks TGB for your support, Efforts and Time.
TGB: Thank you very much.

It was the last time when I saw TGB. After this interview, TGB was fixed within next 6 hours. The Great Bug is no more. The bug which was not found in six releases has been fixed at last.

This is the story of TGB.

Disclaimer: This is not the original interview of TGB. The original interview is edited because of foul and abusive language :)