This was first published in Testing Circus Magazine – March 2016 Edition . Feeding the revolution in web technology and development has been the advent of evergreen browsers. These browsers will update automatically as new features are added or bugs fixed often without any intervention from the end users. This change has unshackled web … [Read more…]
There’s a lot of fear and mysticism associated with code. As a result some testers treat interacting directly with code like its covered in cooties. Immediately taking evasive action to avoid the potential exposure to that life threatening imaginary playground disease. Seriously though, no matter how readable it may seem to those familiar, it’s easy … [Read more…]
Every few weeks or so I see a new question on the LinkedIn’s Test Automation group about getting started writing API tests and there’s almost always a flurry of responses recommending SoapUI. There are definitely alternatives, but if you are just getting into automation or API testing in general SoapUI offers a visual interface that … [Read more…]
The National Highway Traffic Safety Association has wanted to ban self driving cars. Elon Musk says it could lead to ban human driving. Does this debate sound familiar? Testers have been struggling with coming to terms with the role of automation within their own companies and across the software industry as a whole for years … [Read more…]
You may hear the term Technical Tester thrown around more and more these days. You may even hear how there is shortage of candidates for those types of roles. The technical tester sounds like a mythical creature, some hybrid between a developer and a tester. I’m all for testers learning new skills and contributing to … [Read more…]
Automated testing is a pretty contentious subject in the testing world. We spend a great deal of time and energy distinguishing between what a tester does while engaging with a product and what the automated tests or checks are doing. Justifying why we need to have a person actually interact with the software instead of … [Read more…]
This week I decided to go international and participated in my first Weekend Testing Europe session. It’s not region locked or anything, the sessions offered by the Weekend Testing Americas I’ve attended have all had an international cast of characters as well. Mostly it offers people more convenient times, although I have had my curiosity … [Read more…]
This Weekend Testing session was a bug hunt on LightBot, which is a game designed to help people learn programming concepts. The Balancing Act One of the first things I realized is testing a game is hard! I put my testing hat on and started looking at the game. I had to try the game … [Read more…]
In my last post I took a look at some software testing definitions provided by the ISTQB. In that post I stated I did not think there was such a thing as static testing, which has sparked some debate so let’s dive a little deeper. Static Testing It’s defined by the ISTQB as: Testing of … [Read more…]
It’s really hard to explain to people why testing is a valuable activity if you can’t describe what it is you are doing and why you are doing it. Intuition is a big part of testing, but intuition is fed by understanding. A good detective or doctor might have a hunch, but that hunch is … [Read more…]