Category Archives: General

Remembering Jerry: Experiential Learning: Beginning, Inventing, Simulation

It’s been five years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. I already covered Jerry’s physical books in the past year. There are some gems left in some of the books he later published on Leanpub. This week, I will dive into three of them in one blog post: Experiential Learning: Beginning, Inventing, Simulation. (You can get most of the content of the physical books I reviewed on Leanpub as well – some might have a slightly different name.)

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Remembering Jerry Weinberg: Weinberg on Writing – The Fieldstone Method

It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. With not so many books from Jerry left on my shelf, I picked Weinberg on Writing – The Fieldstone Method, published by Dorset House in 2006.

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Some housekeeping

Today has been the last day of work for me in 2022. I will be on vacation for the next couple of weeks. That said, I will cut back my publishing pace a bit. I intend to post a weekly review of Jerry’s books for a while, but can’t promise to write much more in between.

That might change in 2023 – or I might be back on a regular hiatus. As with all my writings, I try to keep my writing as an exercise for me, to get my thoughts straight, train the muscle to take something away from a day of work that I want to write about every day at work, and reflect on the things I perceive during the work day. I just took you along for the ride for the past few months.

I hope you will occasionally check back for new content, and maybe during brighter days, there will be an opportunity to meet in person in the future. Thanks for reading along all my thought-sorting here. I hope I can keep my writing going, but doubt I want to continue this particular kind of pace from the past months.

Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a Happy New Year.

Remembering Jerry: Are your lights on?

It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, we are going to take a look at Are your lights on? – How to figure out what the problem REALLY is coauthored with Donald C. Gause. published by Dorset House Publishing in 1990.

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Remembering Jerry: Computer Programming Fundamentals

It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. On a weekly basis, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. Today, we are going to take a look at one of his earliest works I could get my hands on Computer Programming Fundamentals, co-authored with Herbert D. Leeds. published by McGraw-Hill in 1961.

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Remembering Jerry: Becoming a technical leader

It’s been four years since – sadly – Gerald M. “Jerry” Weinberg passed away. Ever since then, I struggled with some public mourning about him, until recently I had just the right idea. In the coming weeks, I will publish a review of a book I read that Jerry either wrote himself or is about some of his work. I struggled with the order I want to go for these books, chronological, topic-wise, in the order, I read them. Even after consulting my network, I don’t have a clear picture there, so I will basically just go with “whatever I want to do this week”. So, the first book I picked is Becoming a technical leader – An organic problem-solving approach published by Dorset House in 1986.

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New blog – this time in German

In the past week I started a new blog – this time in German. I will keep both my English and my German one, but might write less here in the near future. If you’re interested why I started a German blog, I left some reasons on first post. In case you’re unfamiliar with German, you might want to read on.

I dropped out of English classes in the 11th grade. Yeah, I did that. Skip forward 15 years, and I find myself having written several articles in English, contributed a chapter to a book, and eventually wrote one in English on my own. How did I do that? I think that an English blog made a contribution to that.

Now, as I want to know whether I am capable of publishing even more in German. I see some demand for that, and I see a difference between my English-speaking audience and the problems in Germany I face. The second and third entry on my German blog for example describe the issue of congruent communication as well as how to define a problem, and that not the problem is the problem, but our inability to cope with the problem.

That said, I will keep both blogs, and will deal with different topics on the different blogs. I won’t translate between the two most of the time – but leave myself the option open. So, if I raised your attention, you wouldn’t be the first to use an online translation on my blog, I think. :)

Writing about testing

Chris McMahon is organizing currently a peer conference on Writing about Testing. Please spread the word, since I believe it to be a good way to hone our craft and spread the word to future generations of great testers. The intended speakers are writers in the testing fields. Blog writers, article publishers, etc., etc. Overall Chris seems to be well prepared for such a conference and I hope I can either make it to his one or get to organize one myself.