Dragons Out

The English edition of Dragons Out book about software testing for children and adults will be published on the 30th of July, 2021. I'm currently contacting all those who preordered the English book to confirm their shipping addresses. Soon all will be able to enjoy the book! I would like to thank sincerely again all those who have helped me in the book publishing journey by preordering the book. Thank you very much! It has been a long, windy journey. The English publisher Austin Macauley took their time in publishing due to Covid-19 hurries. However, now I'm happy to have reviewed and approved their final proof of the book layout. Everything seems to be in order. Typos fixed, pictures on correct pages, the flow of the book working beautifully. It will be a good read! In fact, why don't you rate the book in Goodreads.com, come to speak of it! : ) The English edition reflects the Finnish book in many aspects. However, as the English language flows differently, in a more cond...

I wrote this 10-page piece for EuroSTAR 2020 conference to go with my presentation at that Europe's largest conference. In spring 2021 they published it as a EuroSTAR book. You can get it from this link . Here I've created a version of that paper for the readers of my blog. This is good reading anticipating the publishing of the English edition of Dragons Out book this summer.  Enjoy! 1           Software Testing for Children Society needs IT and testing skills. There is a persistent lack of both programming and testing skills on the job market. The lack becomes worse as our societies include more and more software. We need ever more programmers, and testers, too. You need to test your software.   A popular solution to safeguard our future of IT development, or even the computer literacy of all of our citizens, is to include coding classes in schools so that children can learn software development at an early age. This appro...

I just found this piece of paper "Kari Kakkonen’s entry to Honeywell Futurist Competition in 1995." I think this is my first non-school fictive text. Man, did I anticipate Wi-Fi, 5G, Fast Internet, smartphones, Facebook, electric cars, business optimization, big data, increases in efficiency, and downshifting! Read and be amazed.  Essay about Future: Thoughts of a Net Repairs man on April 15th 2020, 06.15.20 Summary The essay describes the future seen by a Finnish net repairs man Ville. As he is doing some routine work, he thinks about how the net - the global communication network - developed and affects everyday life. He thinks about the physical structure and availability of the net. He considers the numerous uses of the net, the business opportunities, and threats. He notices some technologies created with the aid of the net. He wonders how good influence the net has had on the Finnish and the global society. Essay Thoughts of a Net Repairsman on April 15th 2020. 06.15.20...

Last week I participated in Mimmit koodaa (women code) program's  This is Not a Webinar  where two of my Finnish Dragons Out! books were prizes in a book draw. The event was most inspiring also for a man - it was great to see equal opportunities rising for women to participate in the Information and Communication Technology field. Through great examples, it becomes a norm that it doesn't make a difference what gender you are in the ICT field. I'm happy to give one more example with my book's characters which are equally represented. I even start the book with a little girl as the main heroine. I'm happy to congratulate Heidi Särkioja and Katri-Maija Karvonen for winning the book prizes! And thanks to my publisher Avain for giving these books, too! Another item I would like to raise in this blog post is the conclusion from the feedback survey that I ran this winter/spring among those who preordered Finnish books and among the Finnish schools that received donated boo...

This week I had the joy of being interviewed by Marko Suomi for his Takakansi podcast which has over 100 episodes of interesting book and author interviews. You can listen to it here:  https://takakansi.fi/2021/04/06/kari-kakkonen-miten-ajatella-kuin-testaaja/ We discussed the Dragons Out! book of course, but also software testing in general. What is software testing, for your regular person? I explained that it is checking that all that is supposed to be is there, but also trying to explore the software in ways that reveal the unexpected circumstances. You can find defects in both ways. Usually, you end up running the tests that check against the user requirements multiples times, and thus these tests are good candidates for test automation. This repetition is because of the iterative nature of software development - software is built as parts and the developers are continuously integrating more code to the software they already have and what has been tested. Anything may break wh...

Last week was a blur spent on running an online version of ISTQB General Assembly. Many things to do in a short amount of time. However, I also had the pleasure of presenting my Dragons Out book project at JSTQB conference in Tokyo, Japan. I delivered my talk online as the case has been for all corona-time presentations. This time the suitable balance of reliable presentation and audience interaction was achieved by a recorded presentation and a live Q&A through Zoom. Particularly interesting was that I got questions both verbally from the host Kenji Tonishi translating them from Japanese participants and from the Zoom chat where Hidetoshi Suhara translated Japanese text to English. As they translated my answers back to Japanese, I had time to switch between the two forms of answering questions. Another great experience! The questions themselves were interesting, too. I'll pick one: "Have you ever come up with a dragon that you have then discarded?". My answer: "...

 I have some great news! My English publisher Austin Macauley sent me the layout of the English edition of the Dragons Out book, and I've just reviewed it. The work proceeds nicely. I also got an estimate that the publishing date may be in about two months. We are getting there! A more precise schedule will be available once we get to the printing process. Those who have preordered the English version of the book will soon get their books! In my last blog, I published the feedback survey for all others who have ordered the Finnish book than the schools. You may remember the great feedback averages from the first responses to the school survey. Now, I'm happy to give you the first results of the other readers' survey. The book gets a super average of 4.8 on a scale of 1-5. The presentation gets a 4.33 average. The readers estimated also how much the children liked the book, too, with an average of 4.0. Thank you all who answered the two surveys so far. Keep the responses com...