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
- An introduction to mutation testing and PIT provides a quick introduction to mutation testing and helps you to run your first mutation tests with a tool called PIT. Also, I like the fact that this post goes through the mutation test report, which is generated by PIT, and explains how it helps you to identify the weaknesses of your test suite.
- Page Objects Refactored identifies the common problems that are often found from your page objects and helps you to solve these problems by using the SOLID principles. It also introduces the screenplay pattern that is an interesting and a totally different way to write automated end-to-end tests for web applications. This is not an "easy" post to read, but I recommend that you read it anyway. I promise that it will give you new ideas that help you to write better end-to-end tests.
- Test Stability - How We Make UI Tests Stable describes how LinkedIn developers stabilized their automated UI tests. I love this post because it describes the reason why developers should write automated tests, explains how flaky tests reduced the morale of the development team and slowed them down, identifies the root causes that caused non-deterministic behavior, and explains how developers fixed these problems. In other words, this is a very good blog post, and I recommend that you read it.
- What is new in junit 5 provides a quick overview of the new features of JUnit 5. I have to admit that JUnit 5 looks good. If you share my enthusiasm, you should take a look at JUnit 5 wiki, write a few tests with JUnit 5, and give feedback about it.
The Really Valuable Stuff
- Assisting with inquiries: Part four – how was it for you? explains how you can evaluate and improve your communication skills. The idea is to ask the right questions from the persons who received information from you and alter your communication by using the feedback provided by these persons. Sounds logical, right?
- Outdated testing concepts #4 - Certified means qualified destroys one of my most "popular" myths of software development. I think that a certificate doesn't guarantee that a person is qualified. It only proves that the person in question passed the certification exam. However, we shouldn't think that certificates are totally worthless. They can give us additional information about a person, but if we want to find whether or not a person is qualified, we have to work with her.
- Testing inside one sprint's time identifies the problems caused by a separate testing team that executes all tests in their own sprint. After it has identified these problems, it explains how you can solve them problems by removing the extra sprint and executing test on the smallest possible level.
- Web accessibility, testers’ start for building it in helps you to get started with web accessibility testing. It provides two links (check the end of the post) which should help you to do "a quick sanity check" for your web application. I know that you probably don't have enough time to do everything. That is why posts like this are useful because they help you to ensure that your application doesn't suffer from these basic accessibility problems that are (sadly) ignored by most teams.
- Why Was This Check Created? ask a very important questions that is often ignored. I love blog posts that make me think, and this post definitely raised some ideas that help me to describe why I wrote a specific check (test). I will start by adding comments into my test classes before I write any tests. Also, if I cannot answer to that question, I won't write that test.
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.
- You can share this blog post on Twitter.
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