www.rosie.dev
  • About
  • Articles
  • Projects
  • Talks

Articles

Writing about Software Development

January 18, 2016

Know Your Bugs

As Software Testers, we have to frequently imagine the unimaginable. Through experience we learn, adapt and prepare for the next time we encounter similar circumstances. Recently, I found a particular annoyingly awkward bug and was able to draw from experience to not only identify but also explain very quickly without too much investigation why this bug was happening. I was able to do this as I had encountered an almost identical bug a couple of years previously.

Categories: [testing]
January 6, 2016

The Name, Shame and Flame API Vulnerability game

Its now 2015 and we’re all living in the future! Our world has become a place where invisible intangible things (like APIs) have become rather important in our day-to-day lives. This morning while staring at my PC with sleepy eyes, details of a security vulnerability at www.moonpig.com popped up in one of my social media feeds linking to this article. The post itself was fairly negative towards Moonpig, along the lines of “I will never use their service again because they fail at security.

Categories: [testing]
Tags: [security]
November 12, 2015

If you have to automate IE10, avoid the Selenium 64-bit IE Driver at all costs

When it comes to testing anything in a browser, Internet Explorer tends to have the reputation of being the black sheep of the browser family. Anyone with any experience of testing know that there is a greater chance of something being broken in Internet Explorer than any other browser. Let’s face it, IE doesn’t have a great track record. As software testers, we all remember the pain of having to support IE8, IE7, IE6.

Categories: [testing]
Tags: [test automation]
October 20, 2015

Automating Bacon Sandwiches

I've recently been lucky enough to be involved with a new software development project from the very start. One of the advantages of being the first Test Engineer on the project was that I was able to help implement and set up test automation on the project from the very beginning. Frequently software development projects see test automation as an after-thought and try implement it later, when the software is already quite advanced.

Categories: [testing development]
Tags: [test-automation python]
August 24, 2015

How to develop psychic testing powers when dealing with software that has no requirements

Writing good requirements for software development might seem like an easy task on the surface, but it’s actually much harder than many people imagine. The two main challenges that arise when writing requirements are firstly, requirements can change frequently. Secondly, even if you manage to capture a requirement before it changes, it’s really easy for someone to completely misunderstand or misinterpret it. Good requirements are absolutely crystal clear with no room for interpretation whatsoever.

Categories: [testing]
August 20, 2015

Pinteresting Test Automation - JavaScript Edition

It’s been a roller-coaster of a month since my last blog post. In the last four weeks I have successfully managed to change job and learn JavaScript! I started on JavaScript the same way as Python by completing the free codecademy course. If you test things and you want to learn basic programming you should definitely give it a try. Some initial observations made while learning JavaScript: The learning process was much faster than last time.

Categories: [testing]
Tags: [test-automation]
July 18, 2015

A Pinteresting Python Selenium Example

Eight months ago I started my selenium adventure by learning how to automate finding pictures of cute cats. I chose Python as my weapon of choice due to it being very easy to install, not requiring a server to run and not needing a heavy IDE for development. I have been writing automated UI tests both at home and at work. I found my automated tests not only saved me time carrying out tedious repetitive regression tasks, but also found a range of genuine bugs ranging from obscure to showstopper!

Categories: [testing]
Tags: [test-automation]
June 25, 2015

Applying a Soft Dip Heuristic to Software Testing

Just as different people can possess different political beliefs and not everyone believes the same thing, I think the same can be said with software testing. In the world of testing there isn’t a one size fits all ‘right answer’, it doesn’t exist. Lots of people have lots of different ideas and some of these ideas can conflict with each other. The whole manual vs. automation argument is a good example of this.

Categories: [testing]
Tags: [heuristics]
June 8, 2015

Tips for staying happy and sane while testing software - Tip #3

Assume any information given to you could be made of lies until you have proven it to be true (and seen it to be true with your own eyes). If information given comes from a non-technical or customer facing source be especially wary. If that source is members of the general public then loud warning klaxons should be immediately sounding in your head! What happens when someone else sets your baseline or expected behaviour and the thing you are testing does not meet that baseline?

Categories: [testing]
  • ««
  • «
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • »
  • »»
© 2023 www.rosie.dev