Reinforcement loops are an interesting thing in systems thinking. This week when I heard the news from Atlassian another one of those love reality moments hit me. In today's post I try to roughly sketch the mental model of a system that unfolded in my brain.

While I have made myself look like a complete idiot, at least it was only over email to someone I am never going to meet in real life.

Honest answers only If you were doing a Disney's Hercules quiz, could you go the distance?

Had one hell of a cruise. Everyone I looked at was violently sick. Sea was perfectly calm though 🤔

Does a fart imply the existence of a neart?

YI A chatbot but all input and output is in Geordie.

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do recall, the most famous reindeer of all? Because if you can't then it is not the most famous, is it?

This month marks my ten year anniversary as a professional #Tester. With this comes a new instalment of #XYearsInTesting: www.cassandrahl.com/blog/10-year... I still feel very lucky to have discovered #SoftwareTesting and hope to continue working and growing in this area for many years to come.

The only thing on my list this year is a meaty broth. All I want for christmas is stew.

The moment you know you are out of touch with modern culture? When you see the Strictly couples and don't know who is the dancer, and who is the celebrity.

Ironically, a limp biscuit wouldn't be able to go rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin'

Flash Gordon was ahead of its time. The bit where an ajax request is made to get the body.

MoTaCon does sound like it could be a type of Transformer. It'd be a bug that turns into a feature.

Always a lovely vibe at @ministryoftesting.com Testbash!! ❤️ Thank you to everyone who joined us for the @getpostman.bsky.social sessions. You all looked 🥰 in your silent disco headsets 🏆 See you all next year!!

Thanks to everyone who attended my #TestBash #MoTaCon talk on How to Make Your Work - and Achievements - More Visible, and to MoT for having me. You can find the #BragBoard templates here: www.cassandrahl.com/blog/brag-bo... #ShowShareShine

Leaving the bar, I hit the road. As I lay there, I knew I had drank too much.

Slightly diminish a band: Car Halen

Slightly diminish a band: They Might be Ants

I'm just moving the same code to a different place, what could possibly go wrong? What could go wrong is some idiot could move it to a class method, not an instance method causing the method to be considered "Not Implemented"

I never thought I’d see the day where developers voluntarily turn themselves into testers, but that’s exactly what they’re doing by inviting LLMs to create outputs from requirements they helped refine which they have to check for errors afterward. Obviously the tester skillset is valuable then.

Access to the @ministryoftesting.com community Slack might be worth the cost of a professional membership alone.

Should rate of spam accounts on your service be considered a measure of success? Because @ministryoftesting.com is doing quite well under that measure.

If you saw the code for the feature I'm working on, you'd be able to tell I just re-read 99 Bottles of OOP sandimetz.com/99bottles

Just got out of a chat about leading with quality with the one and only @rosiesherry.com!! It was so much fun ☺️ (And also, I’m feeling a little star struck 🤩)

Woah, I've been awarded 23 Community Stars and earned 16 badges in the #MoTaverse! Great to see these achievements appear on my Ministry of Testing profile. Have you created yours yet? www.ministryoftesting.com/p/cassandrahl

Perfect is the enemy of getting other important shit done.

And now i’ve sent an article off to @ministryoftesting.com for editing and… wow. I’ve gone from riding the emotional Cyclone (shoutout to Brooklyn!) to Kingda Ka 💀🎢

I do Object Oriented Programming, in that the computer objects whenever I try to run it.

Just seen the @ministryoftesting.com lineup for #TestBash #2025 in Brighton in October and I am already both excited and impatient for the fantastic set of talks it looks like it will present… now to try and get to attend!

This has been my day. It'll probably be my Monday as well.

If I ever make a game, I will title it One Play and the sequel would be Two Play. I'd be hoping to make it a quadrilogy.

Just want to give a shout out to this glorious little integration test which saved my arse from unwittingly breaking a bunch of stuff. Well done, you legend, you’re the best!

@ministryoftesting.com If ET (the Spielberg movie character, not the test technique) landed on The Testing Planet, would he be ET The Extra Testrial?

At the @ministryoftesting.com London meetup. Sadly, 5 minutes before a site bug was found, but I don't have time to fix it. Can't decide if it is apt, but it certainly is annoying.

It was like this when I first got in this lift an hour ago

I dreamt last night that I had an idea for a great TestBash talk. Sadly I don't remember what it was, but do remember one line: Even managers can recognize complexity. They take one look and go "wow, that looks complicated".

I saw the time had just gone 8 and thought "shit, I should be starting work". Then remembered it is Saturday.

Did you know... @ministryoftesting.com has a #Glossary of popular terms relevant to #Quality and #Testing that you can view, and even contribute to! Check it out here: www.ministryoftesting.com/software-tes... #SoftwareTesting #QA #TestingTerms

I was never in a childhood organisation / club where they collected badges, but I'm guessing it had a similar sense of achievement to getting badges on my @ministryoftesting.com profile. Really curious as to what others are out there. Which badges am I missing? 🪐

Just had to deal with a flaky positive test. I.e. one that sometimes passed when it shouldn't have done.

It's called Netflix because all you do is flick through thinking "I might watch that", but you never do.

The CFP for the south coasts reconnect one day tech conference in July is open. Come and join @kevlin.bsky.social as a speaker. reconnectconference.co.uk

Merry Berry, to all who celebrate.

As it's Christmas. open.spotify.com/track/19QAw5...

A solution to prevent a problem reoccurring has just caused a completely different issue to occur. The programming life.

Repost with a one letter band name change. Pets edition. Nine Inch Tails

Repost with a one letter band name change. Pets edition. Linkin Bark

I discovered this plant stand was a perfect height for me to use as a standing desk.

That thing in development when you go "damn it, I should have called that something else", but are so far in changing it would be a PitA

Debating if I should commiserate the Bluesky devs for being the place the testers are hanging out.