Nortal Summer University Workshop About Tools for Front End Testing

On last week Nortal held Summer University once again for junior specialists who want to join us. The first week was about general introductions and workshops just to give a taste about Nortal itself and about the role of juniors (some of them are developers, some of them analysts and testers, of course). So I did a small workshop about tools for testing front end and I want to share some thoughts about it.

The content of the workshop is available at GitHub repo – github.com/iriiiina/nsu. You can find three exercises, used tools and further reading there. The workshop was made for non-IT people, who were not encountered testing before.

First two exercises I've made specifically for this workshop, so you can find some hidden bugs in HTML and JavaScript code using DevTool or some browser extensions. Third exercise was about REST services and Postman, so the link is just a sandbox where you can take a lot of different types of REST services.

The slides are here, but they are not very useful without the explanation:


This is the first workshop that I would like to reuse and improve – I never wanted to repeat any of my previous workshops before. I don't know why, may be because this one is simple and can be introduced to any kind of specialists and levels.

I didn't get a lot o feedback from participants (there was about 10 people), but here are some:

• I found front-end testing tools part really useful.
• Very informative, nicely composed workshop plan.
• Very useful tools; a bit hard to follow the demonstration at times.
• The topics were cool and informative but the presentation was a little slow.

The presentation was indeed slow for some IT students, because they already knew DevTool and may be some other stuff. So one of the lessons for the next time is to create more flexible content and give an opportunity to dive deeper for people who are bored.

The second lesson is better plan less and make more breaks, which in this case worked great for me. I was actually surprised how timing went well this time.

And the last lesson is don't waste time on technical stuff that doesn't matter for the main goal. For example, don't mess with creating your own REST services if you want to show Postman. Or don't deal with data base if you want to just print some data (you can save it into browser storage or into session). It went quite well this time as well, mainly because I had a limited time for preparation, so external limitation didn't allowed me to play with all this stuff, which is sure interesting, but makes everything more complex.

In summary, this was the first workshop that didn't make me think that I hate public speaking. Maybe because I was least prepared for it and improvised a lot.

Nordic Testing Days 2017 Summary

This year I participated only on two conference days of Nordic Testing Days and didn't take any tutorial. Here is a small summary about tracks I took (the order is chronological).

[keynote] Enjoy the Ride! by Henrik Roonemaa

Very good talk for the keynote: interesting, not very technical and a little bit off topic. Some short takeaways:

• There are two types of bad products: those that exit the market and those that enters it.
• iPad has a great intuitive design – that's why it's the future. Not for technical people, but for the majority.
• In the internet you are for everybody or for nobody.
• The product should do something for me, not me doing something using the product.

[workshop] How to Build a Robust API Checking Framework by Mark Winteringham

Nothing new for me. One good phrase: if you submit a form for many times, what do you test: UI or API?

[workshop] Me, Myself and Siri by Sami Söderblom

It was not very useful, but really fun. There was a small part about other AI systems besides Siri, but just as references. In summary – you can't really use Siri at work now: may be in a combination with clicks if you really want to, but it's not faster than usual computer usage. However this workshop was way better, than many so called "useful" ones.
Interesting links:

• @seeBotsChat – Twitter account of two AI robots speaking to each other
• Quick Drawing – game-ish neural network, that recognizes human's doodling
• Perpective – API that tells you how many people will be abused by your text etc
• Wolfram Alpha – API that measures and compares everything

[keynote] Creating Yourself as a Tester – make your own testing path by Alan Richardson

• Describe rather than define.
• Do notes about how you work and analyse them later to work better.
• People who came up with software testing knew math and physics very well and they generalized some complex stuff to known testing methods. But to understand the roots of these methods you could learn math and physics as well.
• People are complex systems. If you are trying to copy someone you are coping only high level of the whole system. That's why you need to develop your own system with roots and low levels.

[keynote] 10 Commandments for Ethical Software Testers by Fiona Charles

• Developers don't even know that libraries, that they are using, collect users data.
• Big data is fed into fare and independent algorithm, but this data was selected by someone. Data is biased.
• There are risks in acting, there are risks in not acting. How much risk do you tolerate?
• If you have concerns – make good solid notes for future evidence.
• We develop systems, because we can. Not always because it makes the world a better place.

[workshop] Just Enough JavaScript to be Dangerous by Alan Richardson

The level of the workshop was "like fish in the sea", but as for me it was more for beginners. But I have learned a couple of new tips: like iterating an array in JavaScript without a loop or snippets in Chrome DevTool. Also that button as not a button element is bad, because it leads to cross-browsers problems.

[talk] Test Your Java Applications with Spock by Iván López

Best track on the whole conference! There is a funny thing: the best talk on testers' conference was from a developer. It was actually a demo, where unit tests on Spock and Groovy were shown. And here is a second funny thing: it doesn't need to be a workshop to learn a technical stuff. Iván López just showed really cool features of Spock (like presenting an arrays in tables for data driven testing), so I definitely will try it at work.

[talk] A Story of a Tester Building his First Mobile App by Risko Ruus

Good short talk about how idea came true as an app.

[talk] Determining Your Application's Heartbeat Through Monitoring and Logging by Gwen Diagram

General talk about need of proper logs and monitoring systems. Maybe useful for beginners who didn't encountered real projects yet.

[keynote] Building Smart and Reliable Self-Driving Robots by Kristjan Korjus

Perfect for final keynote, but I wish the robot do more stuff on the stage.

• They limit speed of the robot to 6 km/h, so it won't be classified as self-driving car and won't fall into regulations.
• Software can help to get maximum out of a crappy hardware.
• They don't have tests and documentation, because hardware is changing too quickly.
• To avoid security issues related to 9 cameras on robots, no person ever see pictures with normal resolution, so it's impossible to see numbers or faces.
• Craziest people are in London, who says something like that's my street, I don't allow robots here!
  
• There is no self-destruction system, because they don't have tests and what if there is a bug in this system? :)

Other Stuff Mobile app is super cool! I don't see point in notes and feed, but favourite tracks in the schedule, notifications and feedback is very convenient.

Notebooks with conference floorplan and tracks description is cool, as always.

Drum show with drum sticks is the best!