Hats off to Dr. Fawcett

Its the season to make merry, enjoy, have fun, overeat... u name it! With this I thought let me veer off to a different topic and talk about one person who is been instrumental in introducing me to the area of Software Dev. & Testing. Altho' I used to be a lot into programming during my undergrad years in Bombay and had an internship which was programming oriented I got a real taste of what things are at Syracuse University under the guidance of Dr. Jim Fawcett. As a matter of fact I just got a mail from him today and had a few comments about my blog. And it struck me that I should have a post acknowledging the person who has a big hand in what I am today. I took a lot many courses under him and also had my Masters Project under his guidance.

Dr. Fawcett provides as many as 7 courses in Software Development at Syracuse University. One of the courses which I cherish is Software Design Studio (CSE 784). The Software Foundry Project we worked on will live in my heart forever. It was this project where I worked as a pure "Software Test Engineer" and since then there is been no looking back.

You could visit Dr. Fawcett's web page at:

http://www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/webpages/fawcetthome.htm

And the first pic that you see, thats me sitting right in front of the PC next to Dr. Fawcett. It was during our Software Foundry Qualification Test. You could also check out the Foundry web page at:

http://www.ecs.syr.edu/faculty/fawcett/handouts/webpages/Foundry.htm

One more thing which the courses indirectly gear you up for is how to go on without a few days of sleep. Oh well, its not that bad, but for someone like me who has various activities besides coursework.... I enjoyed those sleepless nights.

Dr. Fawcetts courses not only thought me C++, C# etc. but a good methodical approach to any given language. Recently at work, where I initially worked off Microsoft based stuff and slowly learnt up other languages (eg. SAS), the learning process was quick. As a matter of fact, my new job is more based off SAS and little off .net. The courses taught me an approach to design in a way I could have only dreamt of. And more so, tight deadlines, learning new things on the fly and incorporating them in your projects have given me a good sense of how to approach anything new.

Anyone who considers Syracuse for CE/CS has to pick up a few courses under Dr. Fawcett, else you have not had a taste of Syracuse. Hats off to Dr. Fawcett.

Now, a little bit of a pop-quiz for you likely testers. Directing you to Michael Howards blog (who I believe is the author of Writing Secure Code and also works at Microsoft). The blog is on the evils of strncat and strncpy. Try to answer it without looking at the answers page. Just to let you know, I didnt get some of them!
http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/2004/11/02/251296.aspx

Also worth checking out is Sara Fords blog, with its entry on test case code and identifying false negatives
http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2004/12/14/307153.aspx

You guys have a Merry X-mas and dont over eat! Time for me to see Heat taking on the Lakers!! I hope Shaq and Kobe put up a good face off!