Friday, Debtember 06, 2024
“Obvious” things aren't always obvious
This video about washing clothes in the Victorian era popped up on my YouTubes feed. It definitely made me appreciate modern washing machines, taking a two-day chore into a few hours, most of which is just waiting for the washer and dryer to finish their jobs (and as Simon Whistler, notable YouTuber with a bazillion channels, always states, “the past was the worst!”).
But it was this comment:
I’ve noticed a lot of people in these comments explaining how their grandmas taught them differently and I would like to highlight how CRITICAL that is! Part of the issue she has is that the book doesn’t record the “obvious” things that existed only in the memories of these people, but these comments show that those memories are still alive! We need to get these written and consolidated before the history is lost!
that really hit me.
Back when I was working at The Ft. Lauderdale Office of The Corporation (which later turned into The Enterprise) I wrote a checklist to run the regression test I had written. Of course, there was a ton of implicit knowledge that wasn't obvious to me and therefore, each time someone new ran the test (new members to the team) additional steps had to be added.
That happened multiple times.
Later I rewrote the regression test that was two steps (once you got all the credentials sorted out—thirty-five steps in the original test), and finally, about a year before I left, a third regression test that only had one step—running it—it set everything up for you.
But my concern with automating these tests were if any thing were to go wrong—would anyone know what the actual steps are to diagnose a problem? Perhaps that's why my last mangager kept pestering me with questions about the regression test instead of some of the lesser mentioned components like “Project: Clean-Socks” or “Project: Dolly,” both of which were still in use but hadn't changed since 2015 (and might still be running for all I know).
