Hi Reader, welcome to another edition of pie mail!

​

It's been a super busy couple of weeks for me. I've hosted TestBash NZ, run a marathon, celebrated thanksgiving, and been best man at a wedding. I missed out on TestFlix because of the wedding, but I plan on catching up once the recordings are published!

​

On the subject of thanksgiving though - thank you for subscribing to this email! It means a lot to me that you consider it worth your time.

​

It's been a bit of a bonkers year, but I'd love to know what you are thankful for!

---

🎓 This week I learned... 🎓

...a lot about XCode and iOS development!

I've been knee deep in iOS development this week.

Here are a few things I've learned.
1) You can install multiple versions of XCode on your Mac. (Just go to the 'more' section in Downloads in the Apple Developer Center). I'm not sure it's a good idea, but it is possible! It's useful for me, because my company have customers that build our SDK using different versions of XCode.

2) Always clear derived data when building a new version of something! XCode caches a bunch of stuff (called derived data), and this cached data can make things messy. When you switch branches for example, it's important to make sure the derived data is empty so you're not using cached files from a different branch. I use an app called DevCleaner to do this cleanup for me.

3) Files from the XCode simulator get stored locally. This one is quite specific to my own needs, but in case it helps someone - you can find your XCode simulators in ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/{device guid}. Any files saved on the simulated device get stored here. I needed to get log files from the simulator, and learning this saved me a lot of copy-pasting!

​

Gotta say, the iOS / XCode development environment isn't my favourite. But, doing new and challenging things is how you learn, and it's definitely been a learning experience!

---

🧩 Puzzle time 🧩

An Uber driver this week convinced me to download DiDi, another ridesharing app.

I went through the sign up process, up until the point I had to set a password.

​

At this point in the process, I decided this was not the app for me.

There are three things that made me decide not to install this. Can you figure out what they were?

Hint 1: the 'DiDi pasted from 1Password' message appeared when I pasted my password in the field.

Hint 2: what's the max length a password could or should be?

Hint 3: what does a spelling mistake say to you about the quality of a product?

---

✨ Some interesting links ✨

Beth Marshall's Test Automation Portfolio

If you've been following Beth The Tester's blog, you'll know she's been working on an automation portfolio for the last few months. She recently completed the project, and it's pretty cool. I'm inspired to set a similar portfolio as a goal for next year!

​

Git school

​Visualising Git is a fun tool for testing out your command-line git skills. Guess what! I learned that I have some things to learn about Git! (Thanks Akshay for sending it!)

​

Twilio use A/B testing to increase authorization rates by 10%

This is a cool story from Stripe about how Twilio did A/B testing on different payment providers. Of course, it makes Stripe look good. But it's worth reading about how the process worked and where they found improvements.

​

Street Fighter Alpha: An Oral History

I love fighting games - so I found this article from Polygon about the development about Street Fighter Alpha super interesting. Spoiler: one driving factor for making the game was that they had a whole lot of leftover hardware they needed to use! Convenience turned into a massive success - I love things like this!

---

🎪 Events coming up 🎪

Here's some happenings over the next couple of weeks that you could get amongst.

​

Fall OnlineTestConf (December 1-3)

I mentioned it last newsletter, but it bears repeating: OnlineTestConf is happening again, from December 1-3. Two of my favourite testing personalities, Anne-Marie Charrett and Maaret Pyhäjärvi, are speaking - makes this a must-see in my book!

​

Virtual meetup with James Bach (December 2/3)

AgileHub are hosting a virtual meetup with James Bach to talk about Software Testing craft. James is one of the founders of RST, and a well known speaker on the subject of testing, so this should be an interesting chat!

​

HolidayBash (December 4/5)

Another one that I've mentioned before, but one more time for the people in the back: Ministry of Testing are hosting HolidayBash, a kind of online Christmas party. It works out OK for NZ timezones, so I've signed up for a game called "The crystal maze". I really don't know what it is, but I think I could use some supporters, if you're around!

​

Fireside chat with FirstAMLs Chris Caigou (December 8, Auckland only)

This one is for those of you in Auckland. Startup Grind AKL are hosting a fireside chat with Chris Caigou, CEO of FirstAML. FirstAML are a company doing some really interesting things at the moment, and growing rapidly - if you can make it, I'm sure there'll be some interesting insights!

​

Accessibility Ask Me Anything with Matthew Parker (December 8/9)

Ministry of Testing are hosting another one of their excellent AMA sessions. This time, with Matthew Parker on the subject of accessibility. I had the pleasure of meeting Matthew when I was in Manchester a few years ago, and he's one of my favourite people - this is another one not to miss!

---

👋 Thanks for reading! 👋

There it is! Once again, I'm really thankful for you for being a part of this small but fun email community.

Please send through any feedback, and tell your friends if you like it.

As always, I'm on LinkedIn or Twitter, too.

​

Cheers,

James a.k.a. JPie 🥧

​https://jpie.nz​

​