What Are Heuristics?
-
Unlocked
Lena Nyström
Engineering manager, Author and Public Speaker
Sarah Deery
Learning And Development Specialist
Talk Description
What are heuristics?
Heuristics are approaches that we use to solve a problem that is similar to a problem we know how to solve, but not necessarily the same.
Got any examples?
Yeah. I think the most, clear one is doors. First time we come across a door, we don't know how it works. But as we learn how doors work, it becomes easier and easier to understand different kinds of doors.
So different types of handles or sliding doors suddenly become easy to to understand. An example from software development would be CRUD, which I find very useful. Create, read, update, delete, which is basically what ninety percent of our software does. We create posts, we read posts, we update them, and we delete them.
What are the benefits?
I guess the biggest benefit is we don't have to invent the wheel every time, so it becomes easier to solve problems as we add more knowledge about similar problems.
Any pitfalls?
They are models of they aren't the truth, so they are fallible. And, of course, we tend to make a lot of assumptions, and those assumptions might be wrong. Fantastic. So now we know about heuristics.
Learn More with Ministry of Testing
- Useful Software Testing Heuristics Resources - Ministry of Testing Collection
- Would Heu-Risk It? cards - Ministry of Testing game developed by Lena Nyström
- Ministry of Testing Club forum Heuristics tagged posts
- Ministry of Testing Heuristics Search Results
Lena Nyström
Engineering manager, Author and Public Speaker
Sarah Deery
Learning And Development Specialist
Heuristics are approaches that we use to solve a problem that
is similar to a problem we know how to solve,
but not necessarily the same.
Got any examples?
Yeah. I think the most, clear one is doors.
First time we come across a door, we don't know how it works.
But as we learn how doors work, it becomes easier
and easier to understand different kinds of doors.
So different types of handles or sliding doors suddenly
become easy to to understand.
An example from software development would be CRUD,
which I find very useful.
Create, read, update, delete,
which is basically what ninety percent of our software does.
We create posts, we read posts, we update them, and we delete them.
What are the benefits?
I guess the biggest benefit is we don't have to invent the
wheel every time, so it becomes easier to solve problems as
we add more knowledge about similar problems.
Any pitfalls?
They are models of they aren't the truth, so they are fallible.
And, of course, we tend to make a lot of assumptions,
and those assumptions might be wrong.
Fantastic. So now we know about heuristics.
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