atdd

Re-evaluating and bouncing

/ jankka / Leave a comment

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.

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Learning curves

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It seems I have a road ahead. Not sure what is going to happen, but at least I know that I’ll enjoy the ride. The ride will be long and it will be hard at times, but all I have to do is to remember that I have all the time in the world for this and the target is not to create a perfect application, but to learn how to automate tests and develop with Python and Robot Framework. Both skills I see as needed in the future.

First of all, after everything was installed yesterday, I sat down and went through some tutorials. Both git & Robot Framework are getting more familiar now. Far from being perfect, but at least I’ve been using both. Git is, by the way, a lot more intuitive with the commands than CVS. And it really neat to use a service like GitHub to store my stuff in. At the moment the solution I started to lab with is stored as private in GitHub. In the future I plan to create a public variant on that in order to get it shared properly.

I also managed to start the Algorithms -project and created the first excercise. It is a simple insertion sort I managed to get together by help from stackoverflow (a really good site to search for information;)) and a slight use of my brain. I actually needed the stackoverflow -solution more or less as interpreter to the algorithm -books pseudo -code.

And last, but not least, I actually have now done my first time ever ATDD -approach on developing. The test case was created and it failed in the beginning. After some coding I managed to get it also go through and got a PASS as result. And the test case is of course using selenium webdriver -library to verify that the web -page is up and running.

As a bonus I actually got an idea about a solution on how to parse some input strings properly with groovy -script in SoapUI. A thing I will need to do at work next week anyhow.

So to say, it has been a proper weekend.

Sidekick

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Apparently it never is enough. Nothing is. Man born a hoarder is a hoarder, even during the nights or weekends. The last 2-3 weeks have been kind of challenging mayhem at work. I have to admit that my capability in adopting to varying situations has been tested. Several times. Long days, tough days. No time to reset, besides in the evenings at home or at the gym. Mostly both. Luckily training the unknown when following the CrossFit helps me mentally to get used to attacking the unknown. That’s a blessing. But even though it has been rough, it surely seems I haven’t been capable to do enough on the creative side.

I’ve been bouncing this idea of web -service that could help me as a tester. And since nobody is going to do it for me – partly due to my lack of capability to describe it properly and inthusiastically enough, partly due to the fact that every single other one at the work is evenly loaded – I’ll need to do it myself.

What I have planned is to do the whole stuff with Open Source SW, using Python, Django and git. Cucumber has been fetched and installed, as well as RobotFrameWork. Those are the tools for me to use.

Developing is a creative process and I’m pretty sure I’ll learn a lot on the way. I’m going to tackle this from the ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development) point of view. Hopefully I learn new stuff for testing as well as the crucial stuff for automating my tests and using development skills as tools for my work as a tester.

Now, since this is going to be part of my work, it is going to be a system test support tool, I cannot release anything (at least as it is) on my GitHub. I do have plans, though, to put something there, but as stripped version.

So far the project has been setting up stuff: Yesterday, a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 to my Dell Latitude, today getting the tools installed and reading the first introduction chapter for Git -usage. Tomorrow I should be good to go.

And for the record, I don’t except things being too ready too soon. This is going to be done for my education and amusement only. Status updates might follow every now and then anyhow 😀