Hello
I'm Nikita Danylov.
Software testing, curiosity and intelligent systems.
I have tested software for many years. I keep discovering how deep testing can go, and how AI makes the human part of it even more important.
Approach
“It works” is where the questions start.
To me, testing is a way of learning, finding out what a product really does, where its risks are, and whether the result deserves our trust. I like how both testing and AI are driven by questions and curiosity.
I treat results produced by automation or AI agents as just information. A passing run or a confident answer can still deserve a closer look. Automation, including AI, is most useful when it extends what people can observe without replacing their judgment.
I try to look beyond the feature in front of me and consider the wider system, its interactions, and possible side effects. Often, the most useful outcome of testing is not certainty, but a clearer picture of what is still uncertain.
Writing
Questions I'm thinking through.
Occasional essays, each one an attempt to think a single question through.
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When generating checks becomes cheap, what becomes expensive?
If writing checks stops being the hard part, the cost moves somewhere else. Where?
Elsewhere
Selected work, and traces in other places.
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Work · Now
Qover Where I currently test software.
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2023 · Conference
EuroSTAR - Lightning talk Spoke about the tester as the primary testing instrument with his perception, judgment and self-observation.
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Training
Rapid Software Testing Shaped how I approach testing as investigation.
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2017–2020 · Code
Algorithms Algorithmic problems and data structures, worked through with checks.
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2017–2019 · Code
Family budget A small app for tracking a family's income and expenses.
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Profiles
About
Why Light On Soft?
It grew out naturally when I began observing myself and life more closely. Testing had taught me that the interesting work often happens in uncertainty. Over time, I became curious about whether this way of thinking could extend beyond software. I started to see that, in a sense, I could also be a tester of life, observing, questioning, experimenting, and learning from what happens.
I don't know yet how much judgment to hand to software that seems to reason. A lot of this site is me trying to find out.
Along the way I have learned a lot from the writing of Gerald Weinberg, James Bach, Michael Bolton, Cem Kaner and Robert C. Martin and, from a different direction, Frank Herbert, whose books are full of systems, power and the limits of prediction.
I am less interested in collecting tools or methodologies than in understanding how products behave, and why. Light On Soft is my personal website, where I think that through in public.
You may also find my name spelled Mykyta Danylov. It's the same person. A plainer account of who I am and what I do is on the about page.
Friends
Worth discovering.
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A friend's channel →
My friend has a YouTube channel that I would like to share here.
Contact
Say hello.
Write me a letter. Once it's sealed, it finds its own way to my inbox.