Software Testing Group Q&A

Dave Steffen completed his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Colorado State University in 2003, and promptly changed course for a career in software engineering. He has worked primarily in defense and aerospace, and is currently a Principal Engineer at SciTec Inc.'s Boulder office. For reasons unknown, he has turned out to be the expert, champion, and occasional street-corner evangelist for unit testing at most of the companies he has ever worked at.

Phil Nash is the original author of the C++ test framework, Catch2, and composable command line parser, Clara. As Developer Advocate at SonarSource he’s involved with SonarQube, SonarLint and SonarCloud, particularly in the context of C++. He’s also a member of the ISO C++ standards committee, organiser of C++ London and C++ on Sea, as well as co-host and producer of the Cpp.chat and No Diagnostic Required podcasts.

More generally Phil’s an advocate for good testing practices, TDD and using the type system and functional techniques to reduce complexity and increase correctness. He’s previously worked in Finance and Mobile and offers training and coaching in TDD for C++.

C++ lecturer at the Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo and Dev Advocate at Incredibuild. Previously the Chief Programmer at Comverse. Co-organizer of Core C++ conference and a member of the Israeli ISO C++ NB. Currently a visiting researcher at Stony Brook University, New-York.

Fedor Pikus is a Technical Fellow at Siemens Digital Industries. His earlier positions included a Chief Scientist at Mentor Graphics, a Senior Software Engineer at Google and a Chief Software Architect for Calibre PERC, LVS, DFM at Mentor Graphics. He joined Mentor Graphics in 1998 when he made a switch from academic research in computational physics to the software industry.

Fedor is a recognized expert on high-performance computing and C++, he has presented his work at CppCon, SD West, DesignCon, in Software Development Journal, and is also an O’Reilly author. His responsibilities as a Chief Scientist include planning the long-term technical direction of Calibre products, directing and training the engineers who work on these products, design, and architecture of the software, and research in the new design and software technologies. Fedor has over 25 patents and over 100 papers and conference presentations on physics, EDA, software design, and C++ language.

Ben Saks is the chief engineer of Saks & Associates, which offers training and consulting in C and C++ and their use in developing embedded systems. Ben represents Saks & Associates on the ISO C++ Standards committee as well as two of the committee’s study groups: SG14 (low-latency) and SG20 (education). He has spoken at industry conferences, including the C++ and System Software Summit, the Embedded Systems Conference, NDC Techtown, and CppCon, where he’s also chair of the Embedded Track and a member of the program committee. Ben previously worked as a software engineer for Vorne Industries, where he used C++ and JavaScript to develop embedded systems that help improve manufacturing productivity in factories all over the world. He’s also a contributing author on multiple Vorne patents.