James Thomas

Create, Curate, or Spectate? In 2024 I wrote a post, An AI Red Light , about a creative project I did with my daughter using both AI and "traditional" tooling. This was ...

How much agency do you want in your work? How much are you prepared to outsource to an LLM?

Blogged: Create, Curate, or Spectate? qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2026/03/high...

Why Test, Test What, Then How? There was a time when testing was all about the mnemonics . Well, we had no AI back then so thinking about our human craft and how to share ...

Don't rush to deciding how to test, be intentional about why first.

Blogged: Why Test, Test What, Then How? qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2026/02/why-...

Infinite Loop * Infinite Space The Wikipedia page on infinite loops in programming describes them as "a sequence of instructions that, as written, will con...

When everything is always changing and when your product is non-trivial how can you decide what to test, how much to test it, when, and how? I built tooling to amplify my exploratory testing.

Blogged: Infinite Loop * Infinite Space qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2026/02/infi...

Challenges and Wins I was guest speaker for a software testing class at EC Utbildning  a couple of weeks ago. I talked about one of my hobby horses — using ...

Enjoying my work when I'm not enjoying my work.

Blogged:Challenges and Wins qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2026/01/chal...

Reasonable Doubt In Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work  Simon Willison writes: As software engineers we ... need to deliver code that works ...

A few thoughts on proof in testing inspired by Simon Willison's blog.

Blogged: Reasonable Doubt qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2026/01/reas...

Incuriosity Killed the Project In yesterday's Angry Weasel newsletter, Leadership is a Constant Experiment , Alan Page was explaining how, as a leader, he gets better resu...

On the value of looking outwards.

Blogged: Incuriosity Killed the Project qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/12/incu...

On Herding Cats Last night I was at the Cambridge Tester meetup for a workshop on leadership. It was a two-parter with Drew Pontikis facilitating con...

I was at the Cambridge Tester meetup for a session on leadership last night.

Blogged: On Herding Cats qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/11/on-h...

Waist Management I bought a belt recently. Unexpectedly, it came with a tool for making holes and the notice above. My initial reaction was to ch...

You don't have to wait for knowing when you could be learning.

Blogged: Waist Management qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/11/wais...

The Joy of Clicks It's all relative. There's enough wrong in the world that having an imperfect job in tough economic times is still a privilege that many w...

Get your kicks where you can.

Blogged: The Joy of Clicks qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

The Momentum of Doing It It's 14 years since I first posted on Hiccupps and one since I wrote about about  using trees for my mental health . Both practices are ongo...

Habitual value starts with valuable habits.

Blogged: qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-...

Open Your Mind Jerome Groopman, in How Doctors Think , reviews ways in which doctors can make poor choices, identifies potential causes, and su...

How Doctors Think, how they could think, and how we can also think.

Blogged: Open Your Mind qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/10/open...

I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch I'm slowly learning German ... for fun, believe it or not.  To limit my time commitment I've been mostly studying with lessons on a...

Learning? Find your own path.

Blogged: I Wish I Could Sprechen Sie Deutsch qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/10/i-wi...

Q What, Mate? I'm enjoying The Vernon Richard Show  a lot recently because the vibe Vern and Richard have created is one where two knowledgeable...

It is worth trying to define quality engineering, quality assurance, and testing?

Blogged: Q What, Mate? qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/09/q-wh...

Prioritise we Must Over on the Agile in the Ether  Slack instance one of the Ethernets recently asked: MoSCoW: Does anybody have a simple way of expl...

Must, Should, Could, Won't?

Blogged: Prioritise we Must qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/08/prio...

Bottom-up or Top-down? The theme at  LLEWT this year was Rules and constraints to ensure better quality.   My experience report concerned a team I'd been on...

Where do the constraints on your work come from? Where *should* they come from?

Blogged: Bottom-up or Top-down? qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/08/bott...

Projects I've Bean On It was my wedding anniversary recently. The picture at the top is the front of the card I got for my wife. Yeah, I know. Somehow she still l...

We agree. Or do we?

Blogged: Projects I've Bean On qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/07/proj...

The Best Testing I Could Maaret Pyhäjärvi  posted the quote above on LinkedIn a few weeks ago. It speaks strongly to me so I asked Maaret if she'd writ...

Exploring a quote to try to understand why I found it so instantly compelling even while it nagged away at me.

Blogged: The Best Testing I Could qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...

LLEWT 2025 I attended LLEWT 2025 at the weekend. LLEWT is a peer conference  hosted by Chris Chant, Joep Schuurkes, and  Elizabeth Zagroba...

A peer conference on rules and constraints for quality that explores social, technical, and organisational issues? Yes please.

Blogged: LLEWT 2025 qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/07/llew...

Real vs Clear I'm been working on an application that will orchestrate data from multiple services. As the developers add clients for those services, th...

Is your test data getting in the way of your testing?

Blogged: Real vs Clear qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/07/real...

Don't be that Mug I've spoken to a couple of friends recently about testers they know who continually express a desire to "learn automation" and continually f...

Learning a little is usually better than learning nothing.

Blogged: Don't be that Mug qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/06/dont...

Users of Unit Tests We are generally not the target users of the software products we work on.  That's not to say we never use our applications or that we have ...

We might not be the end users of our product, but we are the end users of our tests.

Blogged: Users of Unit Tests qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/05/user...

Where Bash Fits for Me My friend Mirek wrote an interesting post recently: Where Rust fits for me . In it, he made a hierarchy of the programming languages he re...

I try to be intentional about my use of tools and it turns out that includes using unfashionable and arcane utilities if they suit my needs.

Blogged: Where Bash Fits for Me qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/05/wher...

Going Underground The map is not the territory. You've heard this before and I've quoted it before . The longer quote (due to Alfred Korzybski) from...

The map you make while exploring probably isn't the map your colleagues need for comprehending.

Blogged: Going Underground qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/05/goin...

Compound Interesting In simpler times you had to go out of your way to find useless motivational banalities. There'd be an aisle in the shops that you could ea...

38x better in a year? Well, no, but don't discount the value of intentional practice and the compounding effect.

Blogged: Compound Interesting qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/04/comp...

My Adidas If you've met me anywhere outside of a wedding or funeral, a snowy day, or a muddy field in the last 20 years you'll have seen...

How did I come to buy a pair of Superstars every year for the last 20 years? A post for The April Cools' Club.

Blogged: My Adidas qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/04/my-a...

New Again Or I told you how much I love Kill it with Fire by Marianne Bellotti in This is Fire and you can see it in my copy above too. It's a...

Third post inspired by Kill it with Fire by Marianne Bellotti. This one on trends in tech, the hype cycle, and who drives the market.

Blogged: New Again Or qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/03/new-...

Putting the PR in Project Kill it with Fire is ostensibly a book about legacy systems but is packed with good advice about managing any significant project. In one...

Project management gems extracted from Kill it with Fire by Marianne Bellotti.

Blogged: Putting the PR in Project qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/03/putt...

This is Fire Kill it with Fire is by Marianne Bellotti is a truly awesome book about dealing with legacy systems. If you're in softw...

Why you should read Kill it with Fire by Marianne Bellotti if you are in the software business.

Blogged: This is Fire qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/03/this...

Love My Work In a recent episode of the Vernon Richard show , testing's dynamic duo were inspired by Valentine's Day to talk about their love for our cra...

Simultaneously embarrassing and flattering to have my work called out on a podcast, but I *do* love making just enough tooling to answer the questions I have.

qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/02/love...

Heuristics for Working Today Whatever our workplace constraints, we have agency over our own actions and the choices we make impact us, those around us, and the wo...

Nine approaches to work that I find are valuable more often than not.

Blogged: Heuristics for Working Today qahiccupps.blogspot.com/2025/02/heur...