Where did dragons come at HUSTEF conference and a book extract

 Where did the idea of dragons come? I had this question in the conversations adjacent to my invited speech at HUSTEF 2020 online conference today. I pondered that, of course, I had liked fantasy as literature and movies for as long as I can remember. Also, the fact that I've played role-playing games for 20 years with my friend Janne Korpi as the game master with their genius Phoenix role-playing system had a part to play. But whatever the initial spark to dragons, when I tried them in the story, I immediately noticed that it indeed fits the testing world nicely. The comparisons from bugs to dragons, or from testers and developers to knights seemed to me to jump straight to my face. They were there for grabs. So I adopted the dragon infested fantasy world to represent the world of software development and testing.

The recording of my speech at HUSTEF is here and the slides are here.

I hope you enjoy them.

In the HUSTEF conference, my talk included a task for everyone to imagine a defect and draw that as a dragon. I promised a free copy of my English book (once it is published) for the best dragon drawing sent to me. I got really many great drawings, with creative explanations of the type of defect and then fantastic dragon drawings. I had a really hard time choosing over the best dragon, but here goes - Dóri Nagy gets the book!

And the book extract:

On the way to Mountain City, Swanlake told Laura and Tom everything she knew about Mountain City’s problem. One day in the castle cellar, a chef's assistant had encountered a large dragon. The assistant had come to fetch a big smoked ham for dinner. He was terrified but unhurt after the dragon was more interested in the meat it was eating.

In the story, the castle and the city are bothered by a dragon that emerges from the hill on which the castle is built. In the world of information technology, the hill represents the computers and components of the bank information system. Not all strange things or defects are software related. Some parts of the computer may fail when used excessively or when connected to an increasingly large information system.





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