There are many software development blogs out there, but many of them don't publish testing articles on a regular basis.
Also, I have noticed that some software developers don't read blogs written by software testers.
That is a shame because I think that we can learn a lot from them.
That is why I decided to create a newsletter that shares the best testing articles which I found during the last week.
Let's get started.
Technical Stuff
- Anti-pattern: Cross browser checking describes why doing cross browser checking with WebDriver might be an antipattern. It also explains how we can avoid this anti-pattern by asking one simple question: Testing the UI or Testing Through the UI?
- How to Download files using Selenium (2) describes how we can write Selenium tests which ensure that a file download function is working as expected. This is a very well-written post and I think that the code itself is clear too. In other words, if you are working with Selenium, you should take a look at this blog post.
- Pitest - mutation testing in Java describes how we can do mutation testing with Pitest. The best part of this blog post is that the author explains how we can improve our existing unit tests by using the feedback provided by mutation testing. If you are interested in this topic, you should take a look at this blog post.
- Selecting response elements with GPath in REST Assured describes how we can select element values from JSON response by using GPath when we are writing our automated tests with Rest Assured. This is an excellent post because it covers the most common use cases and it explains every use case.
- TDD for PL/SQL Development describes how we can write automated tests for PL/SQL routines. This is a fascinating post because I haven't seen many blog posts that talk about writing automated tests for "database code or logic". I recommend that you take a look at this blog because it bust the myth which states that you cannot write automated tests for database routines.
The Really Valuable Stuff
- Just because you can automate everything ... doesn't mean you should is an excellent blog post that tells the story of a software project that had a lot of automated tests that were written by people who could not code. As you probably already figured, this story doesn't have a happy ending. However, the lack of coding skill was not the only problem. This project team also wanted to automate everything... I recommend that you read this blog post. You won't regret it.
- TDD In Real Life – Part 2 is the second part of Gil's TDD in Read Life series, and this part explains how we can finally write our code by using TDD, but before we can do it, we have to do some upfront design (again). I really enjoyed reading this blog post because it explains how things are done in real life. It is simple to do TDD by the book when we are writing a calculator, but things get tricky when we try to use it for real software projects. That is why it's super important that people like Gil share their experiences so that we can learn from them.
- The Ultimate Tester: Build Quality In is a very good blog post that explains why we should always figure out our goals before we start writing automated tests. It also describes why we should treat our test code the same way we treat our production code. Even though this is kind of obvious, too many people fail to follow the advice given in this blog post.
- Unit tests value proposition identifies the benefits of unit testing and demonstrates what kind of unit tests are valuable to us. I like the fact that the author recognizes that all tests are not valuable. In fact, some tests can be very harmful. If you want to learn how you can write valuable tests and avoid writing harmful tests, you should take a look at this blog post.
It's Time for Feedback
Because I want to make this newsletter worth your time, I am asking you to help me make it better.
- If you have any feedback about this newsletter, share your thoughts on the comment section.
- If you have written a blog post about automated testing or software testing, ping me on Twitter.
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