Performance testing—the often overlooked ingredient in the success of web applications—was written by Andrew Whitmell. In his post, Andrew explores a certain type of software testing method that he claims is sometimes overlooked. He also discusses various topics to show that performance testing is vital. One of his main points is that, over the years, users and companies have been seeking more and more performance. As Andrew demonstrates with various external data, better software performance leads to better business performance. The different topics presented by Andrew relate to the various benefits that performance testing brings.
I always try to break down my process of selecting something to read or listen to into steps. I do not like to base my decision solely on an article’s title, as it can be misleading. However, I tend to read the article’s title, open it, and also read the subheading. First, Andrew’s title caught my attention because he considers performance testing something that is often overlooked. In my opinion, performance testing should be a priority among testing methods. I chose to write about this post because it presents a different point of view from mine. An application, or the idea of an app, always arises from a need to resolve some kind of issue. Taking this into consideration, we can say that performance should always be a goal of any application.
I would like to highlight a couple of topics covered by Andrew, namely the identification of bottlenecks, the optimization of resource utilization, and SEO boosting. I had not heard of bottleneck identification as a method for improving application performance. Interestingly enough, I was talking to a friend of mine a few days ago about software runtime complexities. We discussed a well-known programming problem called Two-Sum, and he mentioned that utilizing hash maps for this problem improves the runtime complexity from O(n²) to O(n). Just as Andrew points out, the identification of existing bottlenecks in an application can enhance its performance.
The optimization of resource utilization involves testing the program under extreme conditions that are not expected to occur daily. The results from such testing will allow us to identify whether we can better utilize what we have or if we are overspending on certain services. I would also like to mention that SEO boosting is vital for large companies, but not as much for small or local ones. I have seen many local or small companies that do not necessarily provide a web application but have a website for their product. Most of those companies overlook SEO boosting. The amount of time users spend on a certain page depends on its performance, and SEO rankings are highly affected by performance.
From the blog CS@Worcester – CS Today by Guilherme Salazar Almeida Nazareth and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.