I saw the news late on Wednesday evening about the tragic death of Ola Hyltén. I wanted to write something as a tribute - but actually found it too painful. I think Henrik and Pradeep did admirable jobs, here and here (read the comments too).
Many people have fond memories of Ola, and I thought it was worth taking the angle of re-visiting some of his blog posts as a tribute.
Ola's first step into blogging about testing was kickstarted by his experiences at Øredev and on Rapid Software Testing. From these he developed the motto "I think for myself" - which I used to see recurring through his online presence (google & gmail). This was and is a great approach by any tester wanting to learn and know more - something I recognized in him whenever we "talked test" (as he would say).
An exploratory approach was always in his ideas about testing, as seen here. This post was evidence that he might take one starting approach but was always open to discussion and new ideas (something that made it fun talking to him about testing.)
He had that young kid excitement approach to new things that he'd learnt that shone through when he'd found a bug, here.
Awareness that good testing starts with thinking was always with him. Here you can see again his excitement about new ideas and that he used that to remind himself against complacency.
SWET#2 was Ola's first SWET attendance (he was at SWET#3 also), and I think he found the experience inspiring.
Taking his "think for myself" approach with him, he attended an ISTQB course, and wrote about his thoughts, here. He saw danger (as I think most good testers do) in following something without thinking. He didn't just see the "think for myself" need as something specific to testing, as demonstrated here. That's another mark of someone who has a good approach to testing.
In all of this we cannot forget Ola's big contribution to Let's Test. He was there at the first discussions about starting a test conference (during SWET#2). He took the peer conference approach to a test conference, as shown here. He became El Commendante and he opened Let's Test 2012.
This week lost a good thinker, a good test enthusiast, a part of SWET, a part of Let's Test, and a thoroughly nice bloke!
To Ola - cheers mate!
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