I managed to actually re-evaluate my plans and combine them to my skill-set. There is a slight cap there. I can now see, that the skills of my programming are not near the needs of the project. Now that means that I’ll have to build the resources.

This means, of course, that the Algorithm -training is going to be continued, but that it is not enough. In fact I decided to get back to basics and go through two topics.

1. Programming in Python 3
2. Twisted tutorial (and everything related)

So getting those 2 things done will, eventually, get me closer to my ultimate goal: to become an efficient technical tester (A Test Toolsmith, some might say).

Now earlier, in this kind of projects, I’ve let myself sidetrack myself. Pretty easily also. So in this case, I’ll have to learn myself some discipline and perseverance. What I mean is that no matter if I get the ideas on how to develop the project I have in mind (being the messaging answering machine or my Crossfit whiteboard), I should only write the ideas down and get back to them after I’ve finished the ‘course’.

Now the learning should not take too long. Honestly put, I have had programming education in Java and Python. Java -education took place long time ago, just before I was hired at my first Test Engineer -job. The Python training, in the other hand was only few years ago. So in that way re-learning the stuff (and adding more, the course was just a basic one) should not take too much time. And this time I just have to make it all the way. The benefit on having this done at home, as my private project, is that I can also implement my skills right away after I’ve done the learning. Lately the usage of my learned skills has been more or less nothing. I know it is matter of determination at work, too, but previous tasks at work has kept me so busy otherwise that the usage of any coding capabilities has been more or less closer to the zero. Now that also seems to be changing, hopefully for good.

Besides Python, I do have a sneaky feeling that I should learn a bit more groovy. Which actually means that I should refresh also the java -skills. Not the worst idea either. Maybe after the Python is done I can concentrate more on groovy. Besides, we do use groovy -scripting when using SoapUI at work, so that one comes also naturally by the work, too. The other day I managed to even fetch a file from FTP to my desktop. Woohoo 😀

Last, but not least is that I do still have my project plans. To create something useful by using Python, Robot Framework and ATDD -methods to test and create everything. I just need to build my wheels first. Slow and steady should eventually win the race.