Category Archives: CS-Series

Thanks for Coming to My Test Talk™

CS SERIES (3)After learning some life lessons through the pages I’ve skimmed from my copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey; this article’s version for software developers in test caught my eye. What exactly are the seven highly effective habits of SDETs? Here are the seven habits that Angie Jones, a senior developer advocate at Applitools, wrote about: being intentional, enhancing development skills, enhancing testing skills, exploring new tools, automating throughout the product’s tech stack, collaborating, and automating beyond the tests.

If anyone is interested in becoming a SDET, they should follow Jones’ advice as she is very familiar with interviewing SDET candidates. Something thought-provoking about the first one is how automation projects are not always the best option. Before this article, I understood that not everything required automation but it was the end goal for more projects or companies overall. This is due to my experience; for some reason I believed that just because the company I was at wanted automation for something that everyone else would too. After reading this, I am now understanding that automation is only the goal when it is aligned with the overall outcome.

I am noticing a consistent pattern of guides to becoming a good software developer or tester containing similar tips like “enhancing development skills” and “enhancing testing skills” as people in this industry must always keep learning to stay on top of what’s new. Due to the repetition, I have been trying to keep an eye out for the more unique ideas. One of the ideas that stood out to me more is the one of collaborating.

Jones listed careers ranging from business analytics to software development and mentioned how they would be good matches for pairing up with SDETs to help each other better understand certain features and the importance of what they will be working on. From a sociological standpoint, I like this approach to finding all the resources to complete a project outside of the department. As someone who is always looking for ways to connect with people or connect people to other people, this is an effective idea for helping companies and their people feel more at ease with their jobs. The SDETs may feel less pressure knowing they are not entirely on their own and can request help when necessary.


Article: https://techbeacon.com/7-habits-highly-effective-sdets

From the blog CS@Worcester by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

if (two < one) {

CS SERIES (2)According to music artists, two is better than one. When it comes to designing code that has two parts, this may not be the case. In Max Kanat-Alexander’s article, he explains how he has a personal rule of needing to know how generic his code needs to be. He describes it as if he were designing an audio decoder and started out with supporting WAV files and then later needed to add support for MP3 files. His solution was for what he only needed on its own instead of having to copy and paste the common parts for the format; he emphasizes that “it’s not just two implementations that are bad, but also two locations.” Another rule Kanat-Alexander has for helping this stay consistent is to create code well enough to ensure you would ideally never have to go back and change it if another part of the code has to be modified.

I found this information useful because I believe that developers are always striving to be the most efficient coders they can be. In order to do so, using two of Kanat-Alexander’s methods would help them plan to code more effectively. Just imagine the potential headache of realizing you have to go further back to code you thought was finished and then even further back when you notice a change on top of what you originally needed to make. This will probably affect how I will work in the future as it will make me sit back and think beyond the task at hand. It would allow me to save room for potential add-ons without them crisscrossing, which would allow me to skip out on having to do more rework.

At the end of the article, Kanat-Alexander notes that the reader does not have to take this as a “hard and fast law of the universe” and I appreciate how he tries to help the reader but does not try to push them to do it his way. In terms of the subject, I do not think my thoughts have changed too much as I do want to learn how to code better and I would like to continue finding out about people’s coding structure process.


Article: https://www.codesimplicity.com/post/two-is-too-many/

From the blog CS@Worcester by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Testing, Testing. QAn You Hear Me?

CS SERIES (1)To kick off this series, I wanted to introduce why Software Quality Assurance (SQA) testing is important not only for testers to understand, but for developers as well. From my experience, I’ve become familiar with manual testing and exploring different types of automated testing for web applications. I wanted to know a little more about how being a good developer also includes being a good tester and found an article on SimpleProgrammer which reveals the importance of knowing how to test.

John Sonmez, the founder of SimpleProgrammer, says that he “owe[s] a large amount of the success [he] ha[s] had in [his] career as a software developer to [his] background in testing.” I can see why he feels that way, as using just a little more time to double-check what you have created could save you even more time in the long-run. For instance, if something you have spent hours working on seems complete and you do not double-check it and pass it on to a QA team, you have to wait for someone in QA or a testing platform to check it. That could take anywhere between minutes to a few days or more. Once it is QA tested, maybe a bug is found and your task falls back into your hands again.

Could the scenario above been preventable? Yes and no. It is a true that “you can never find all the bugs or defects in a piece of [theoretical] software and you can never test every possible input into the [theoretical] software” but you can try your best. This doesn’t necessarily mean having to do your own end-to-end regression testing through the entire software each time you add a minuscule feature but you should thoroughly check what you have changed and the features directly connected to it.

The article continues to describe common testing forms and what they each mean for developers. Sonmez supports the Agile cycle of software development and describes it in the article as well.


Article: https://simpleprogrammer.com/software-developers-know-testing-qa/

 

From the blog CS-Series by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The CS Series || Intro V2

Processed with VSCO with hb2 presetHey guys! This site is going to take a slight change in direction for the next few months; it’s my last year of college so your girl is going to feature some CS content for classes.

Stay tuned for more!

Samantha Tran

P.S. Please excuse my double-intro.

 

From the blog CS-Series by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The CS Series || Intro V1

Processed with VSCO with hb2 presetHey guys! This site is going to take a slight change in direction for the next few months; it’s my last year of college so your girl is going to feature some CS content for classes.

Stay tuned for more!

Samantha Tran

P.S. Please excuse my double-intro.

 

From the blog CS-Series by samanthatran and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.