Secret Handshake Bug Revealed

Best start off by defining, secret handshake. 

We have all seen the movies like, “Meet The Parents” where the daughter comes home and her and Dad go through a secret routine of hand slapping, hip tapping and phrase reciting before the welcome home hug.  Like TV shows where a couple of guys go through their routines and special handshakes.  When I was in the Marines, we called this checking in.  When out on the town, you could spend 20% of your night, just checking in!  (Explained:  Group of 5, meets up with a group of 7, then a group of 10 come around the corner, you do the math.  The group 7 leaves, more math.).

So a secret handshake is a series of gestures, words, looks, touches, feels, pokes, hugs, etc, that when performed in the correct order with another who knows them, makes you look cool and that you’re one of the crowd.

Yesterday I received an email about Mole stating,  if I open Mole, click on the third item in the TreeView, answer the phone, click on an item to drill, complete my phone call, click on the Options tab, reach down to pick up my pencil I just dropped, then go back and start drilling all over again, click my mouse, I get an exception.  

That is an example of the Secret Handshake Bug.  A list of user inputs, mixed in with real life events when thrown into the blender can produce unexpected results.

Since Mole does not have his own phone yet, he and the testing hamster were unable to catch this during testing and somehow it got out the door.

We are considering implementing testing that requires Mole to break-dance on his keyboard to rule out any possible phantom keyboard, Secret Handshake Bugs.

Mole’s Home Page:
http://karlshifflett.wordpress.com/mole-for-visual-studio/

Code Project Article:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/macros/MoleForVisualStudio.aspx

Enjoy Mole!

Just a grain of sand on the worlds beaches.