Live data from Hacker News

Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

timothyfitz.wordpress.com

1–10 of 76 posts

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#2
One of the greatest lines I have ever read on a blog:

It may be hard to imagine writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer to click ajax frontend buttons executing backend apache, php, memcache, mysql, java and solr. I am writing this blog post to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s just one part of my day job.

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#3
Don't be too disappointed if a single submission gets a lukewarm or confused response on HN. The upmods and comments on here are a lot less consistent than what you're used to. ;) Just keep writing. It's really valuable.

Also, it's clear to me why your daily routine might sound like science fiction to the median HN reader: A lot of programmers have never seen a system like this. As those of us who were online during a specific half-hour period a couple weeks ago can attest, even Google doesn't have a system that's remotely as reliable as this: It appears to be possible to break all of Google search, worldwide, in ten minutes by misplacing a single character in a text file.

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#4
I tell people that we should aim for this sort of automation and they pat me on the head and say, "No, no, that will never do."

I think there's an idea that if something goes wrong because you let an automated system do it, it's somehow much worse than if something goes wrong because there was human error. I don't really understand the reasoning.

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#5
post #2

One of the greatest lines I have ever read on a blog: It may be hard to imagine writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer to click ajax frontend buttons executing backend apache, php, memcache, mysql, java and solr. I am writing this blog post to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s just one part of my day job.

These are automated functional tests. It would be interesting to know if the author uses unit test too and how he writes tests in general. Also some code:test ratio metrics would be indicative of how much weight does all this testing add.

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#7
post #2

One of the greatest lines I have ever read on a blog: It may be hard to imagine writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer to click ajax frontend buttons executing backend apache, php, memcache, mysql, java and solr. I am writing this blog post to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s just one part of my day job.

"writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer"

I find this unparseable. (English is not my native language). As far as I know "one in a million" means something like "very rare". Help?

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#8
post #2

One of the greatest lines I have ever read on a blog: It may be hard to imagine writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer to click ajax frontend buttons executing backend apache, php, memcache, mysql, java and solr. I am writing this blog post to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s just one part of my day job.

"writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer" I find this unparseable. (English is not my native language). As far as I know "one in a million" means something like "very rare". Help?

i am a native speaker and it's not entirely clear to me either but i would feel safe in venturing to guess that it's a reference to the false positive rate

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#9
post #2

One of the greatest lines I have ever read on a blog: It may be hard to imagine writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer to click ajax frontend buttons executing backend apache, php, memcache, mysql, java and solr. I am writing this blog post to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s just one part of my day job.

"writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer" I find this unparseable. (English is not my native language). As far as I know "one in a million" means something like "very rare". Help?

He means the test is broken if it fails more than once in one million test runs.

Re: Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.

#10
post #2

One of the greatest lines I have ever read on a blog: It may be hard to imagine writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer to click ajax frontend buttons executing backend apache, php, memcache, mysql, java and solr. I am writing this blog post to tell you that not only is it possible, it’s just one part of my day job.

"writing rock solid one-in-a-million-or-better tests that drive Internet Explorer" I find this unparseable. (English is not my native language). As far as I know "one in a million" means something like "very rare". Help?

In the article it talks about tests that fail only one in a million times (referring to the quality of the test, not the test case being exercised), I think that is what is meant.
Post reply on HN