Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

In The Evil Tester Show podcast episode 8 I mentioned other people’s definitions of software testing and outlined my own. In this post I will deep dive a little bit more into the other definitions.

Turning off JavaScript is becoming more important than ever because so many sites are JavaScript heavy. Many sites use JavaScript as their protection mechanism to paywall content and prevent spam. Testing these without JavaScript enabled is important.

TLDR; Comparing implementations is not done to criticise, it is done to learn, and understand that different motivations and end goals create different code. Different models of the application, lead to different code. The programmer implements models of the domain, and behaviour, as code.

TLDR; I use Thread.sleep as a tactic, not a strategy, unless I’m simulating random user pauses, in which case my implementation of that abstraction will involve a sleep.

When do you use Thread.sleep?

I avoid Thread.sleep as much as possible when automating.

TLDR; Identify why you should be the one talking about a topic and hold that Why at your core as you build a short sales pitch for the conference organizers.

Conferences publish call for submissions. You can, and should, answer that call and submit a presentation.

Updated: 20200606 to combine 3 related older blog posts into this. Added a section on pay to speak and tips to reduce cost.

TLDR; Variation is a useful tactic to apply to Software Testing. Often this is random variation within an equivalence class. We can also vary when performing Exploratory Testing. Consider varying order, data, state, timing.

I found what looks like a potential bug in LinkedIn regarding the hastag processing, and it made me think through how applying a Variation tactic could help.

Humpty Dumpty re-interpreted for Software Development and Testing.

TLDR; Study examples of automating a game in browser using JavaScript from the dev tools console, and an example of automating outside the browser using a standalone execution tool.

Live Recording with Q&A

SauceCon 2020

SauceCon 2020 was moved online as a free conference.

Title: Automating Tactically and Strategically

One of the biggest concepts that has made a difference to my programming and automating is the concept of “Tactical Vs Strategic”. Tactical being for a specific purpose, possibly a bit rough around the edges, not necessarily completely robust for everyone, etc.. And Strategic being critical to long term aims, maintained and maintainable, etc. In this talk I will provide examples of both strategic and tactical automating for activities as diverse as supporting testing, marketing and general life. We will also consider how and when to move from automating tactically to strategically. And how the concept has helped me change my programming style and how I write code.

Virtuoso Webinar April 2020

On 28th April 2020, I presented in a Webinar with Joe Colantonio.

The webinar was sponsored by Virtuoso.qa

I provided a short presentation on how testing will change in short and long term. And then there was a Q&A session between Adil Mohammed, Joe Colantonio and myself.

You can sign up to watch the live webinar recording with full Q&A using this link.

• Live Replay

You can also read a summary of the webinar on the Virtuoso.qa blog