quick-sketch: software testing

Zoey leaned back in her chair, sipping away at her hot cocoa in her flannel shirt, jeans, and flip-flops. At her desk, Visual Studio was compiling and building their latest changes. Margo was nervous as the last merge with Lev’s updates had been quite the mess to untangle and back out.

And with a ding, the computer told her the build was completed.

Zoey pulled up the emulator on one of her three giant 30” monitors and booted it up in Android. Then she started the app.

“So, what are we buying?” Zoey asked dryly.

“100 kilos of cocaine,” Lev replied, exhausted from his coding marathon. He only half-expected it to work.

“A pallet of shark fins.” Said Margo.

Joe trying his best to one-up them, “five thousand AK-47s.”

On the screen, Zoey searched for bulk Folgers, a pallet of commercial-grade coreless Georgia Pacific toilet paper, and ten refurbished Toshiba laptops. Then she entered the coupon codes.

On the monitor to her left, she saw her order entered in the back-end system with the simulated inventory adjustments and the internal-use-only generated invoices, showing the cocaine, shark fins, and guns.

The messaging traffic for all the legwork needed to fulfill the order from the simulated suppliers zipped through her activity monitor terminal with all the work needing to be done with the test purchases to the different suppliers, which at this moment was also simulated.

“So, this looks all well and good. Tonight, I’ll have it all run in the test harnesses and we’ll see how things go with varying demand and stress.”

All eyes then turned to Lev. It was also his job to ensure that the second side of their two-sided market, the people looking to offload illegal goods from around the world, was there. His global supplier recruitment effort, organized by his remote team in Mexico was well underway.

“So, is that everything?” Zoey asked, projecting total calmness but feeling the butterflies she always felt.

Zoey gave one look around, with everyone giving her a nod acknowledging they knew what their next individual tasks were and that things were progressing.

Then she gulped down the last of her of the hot cocoa, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and did her best Larry The Cable Guy impression, “Well, ged ’er done.”