Aren't You Glad Facebook Doesn't Make Software for Nukes? You Should be!

The Best Recruiting Software on the Planet. Really?

From the product website: "[Product Name] is Quite Simply The Best Recruiting Software on the Planet." I don't know about that, but you sure have The Most Informative and User-Friendly Error Messages on the Planet :-P

When Marketing Budgets Hugely Exceed Those of QA: Thoughts Triggered by Yet Another Bug-Ridden Applicant Tracking System

If advertisers spent the same amount of money on improving their products 

as they do on advertising, they wouldn't have to advertise them.

Will Rogers

Around 2008, I became interested in Applicant Tracking Systems or, rather, what I thought back then an ATS should do and how it should do it. I even toyed with the idea of developing my own, but the interest must have been not strong enough for this idea to go beyond a modest in-house working prototype used to train students. I am still interested in this type of software applications, which now manifests itself mostly in what I call a recurring irresistible itch to find bugs in them (Once a Software Tester, Always a Software Tester). So, here is one for your... amusement.



Let's say you are an employer using an ATS from a reputable SaaS (software as a service) provider.

A job seeker visits your web site, goes to its career section and from there is taken to your ATS.

Note: Technically, it isn't really your ATS since you just "rent" a "slice" on a multi-tenant ATS provided by a SaaS vendor. The applicant may or may not be aware of the fact that he/she is using third-party software, which depends, among other things, on how tightly the ATS is integrated into your web site and how familiar with this type of systems he/she is.

The candidate registers, begins the job application submission process and, a few minutes later, sees something like this:

Screenshot 1 (click to enlarge)

In case you didn't get it, let me show you another one. The screenshot below is from the site of another company, but the ATS SaaS provider and the bug are the same (pay attention to where the red arrows are pointing):

Screenshot 2 (click to enlarge)

Thank God, These Guys Are Not Surgeons

I don't spend much time on social networking sites, including LinkedIn, but, whenever I visit them, within the first couple of minutes, I always stumble on some bugs. Here is one I found today on LinkedIn (in order to actually see what's going on, watch the video in HD and full screen; it's a raw screen recording):


If you are familiar with how LinkedIn works, the video should be self-explanatory. If it isn't, continue reading.

Unless You Really Want to Look Like a Fool, Don't Save on Software Testing

From time to time, I just can't resist the temptation to do some ad hoc testing of business web applications I run into on the Internet. I've been doing it for years off and on (no penetration or any other disruptive testing, of course), and, although I don't keep statistics, my subjective feeling is that web apps have gotten much buggier lately. What's even worse is that the nature of the bugs I come across these days makes me wonder whether whoever is in charge of those applications just slaps them together as quickly as possible and puts them in production without any testing at all.

If you think I am exaggerating, let me give you an example.

Google Voice for Android: Another Crappy Update from Google

Google Voice version 0.4.2.54 (on the phone displayed as 40254) for Android version 1.6 is broken.

Ungraceful Degradation

Today, I was messing with the ubiquitous "Like", "+1", "InShare", and "Tweet" buttons. The "Tweet" button is the only one that degrades gracefully to a hyperlink if JavaScript is disabled. The others just disappear.

I wonder if Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn have even tested their buttons under those conditions. Or, maybe, they are "crappy by design". Either way, Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn got a "minus one" from me today.

Moodle 2.0 Course Backup: DDL SQL Execution Error

Moodle 2.0 fails to backup courses (and quizzes) returning the following error: "DDL sql execution error".

It appears that this error occurs if the database user does not have the permission to create temporary tables.