JuniorLearnsToCode

Very often, when applying to jobs you may get a task to test an app you're not familiar with, or you might not know who to start testing the product on your new job. In these situations, you can try to use heuristics (general rule of thumb) if you are unfamiliar with the application's domain. For the issues you do find, try to think about the from the user's perspective: is something blocking (like login or registration being completely broken) you completely from accessing the rest of the app? Is an issue annoying, but you can work around it? Is it a minor glitch or a text typo? To help conceptualize this approach you can use Personas-based testing. Here is a list of some techniques that can be helpful for testing most apps. For a lot of apps, you can use the CRUD approach to testing: Can you create resources, like registering for an account? Can you read data, like opening website pages without issues? Can you update data, such as changing your username? Can you delete ...

This year has been pretty active for me and there were a few achievements that I'm very happy about. The biggest thing I achieved was the fact that I was able to get my stage fright under more control. I practiced the speeches I delivered at conferences beforehand, and made sure I also recorded myself while rehearsing which to me was the most helpful of all things I've tried. Delivering your practiced speech in front of a mirror can also be a good idea, but a recording allows you to listen and analyze your speech and see what can be improved. This year I spoke at two in-person conferences (long overdue, thanks to Covid) and one online conference, and one in-person meetup. Here's a detailed round-up of what I was up to, first of all, conferences: TestBash Careers - How to market yourself better as a software tester Bosnia Agile Day - Modern Testing Principles - Natural Evolution of Agile Testing Testival - Keynote Why Community Matters, Philosophy and Drive QA Global Summit...

We often hear that everything is a matter of perspective and in light of that notion I have to admit that there was a time in my career when I wanted to give up on testing. Due to having seen testing in a wrong (and rather shallow) light, I pondered hard about leaving it for good for a career in web development. So, let us get into the meat of things. Now, when I talk to people I offer hear them describing me as someone who enjoys testing and is genuinely passionate about software quality. So how was it that I found myself in a situation where I wanted to quit being a tester if I love it so much? It was many years ago, and while I can't disclose exact details, I can talk about it in general terms. This blog post is in part inspired by my personal experience and also by observations I made while talking to lot of testers trough the time - and most of them relatively similar experiences to share, from some point at their career. It is my hope that by discussing things such as this on...

What is DevOps and Why do we Deed it? The current technological and economical state of the world makes DevOps pretty much inevitable and quite a necessity. The traditional software development approaches do not allow the business to have as much flexibility (as the DevOps philosophy does) and more importantly, companies that implement DevOps practices can be a step ahead of their competition and also have the ability to make counter-moves against their competitors more rapidly, when required. For example, let's say your competitor releases a very compelling feature on their web app, and they get a lot of traction and positive feedback from their customers - resulting in more sales, in order to retain your existing user base and to attract new customers, you would need to respond quickly to this, develop a similar feature of your own, in the shortest time-frame possible, while at the same time, making sure that the new feature goes in and out of your pipeline as quickly as is can b...

Podcast -  the "radio" of modern times is very popular these days, especially among the IT folk. The thing I like about podcasts is that they offer information, entertainment, and food for thought. Listening to a podcast while taking a leisurely stroll, a ride on the bicycle, or sitting on the bus while going to work, is a fun way to spend your time, and it's productive as well.  Below I shall list a few podcasts that I've found particularly useful. Since I have listened to a whole bunch of podcasts in the past few years, I will try to limit myself to only the top favourite ones.  As there's no time as the present, let's get started! Syntax This is, truth be told one of my favourite podcasts. It's got two hosts: Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski , both of them are veteran web developers and online course creators. The podcast is mostly, but not exclusively, focused on front-end web developments, with a notable accent on JavaScript, but they do talk ab...

Lately, I've been seeing an increased interest in testing, so I figured I ought to share a few tips that help me get my foot into the door and get that first junior tester/QA role. I'll try to keep it short and concise, as much as I can.  Because that's why. I first got into IT by getting a few certifications from Microsoft (I'll expand on this later), fixing PC and doing technical support shortly after that. My high school degree and college I was going to, at the time, were completely unrelated to IT - I finished art high school and I was studying history in college. I got my first QA role in a company where I had already spent roughly two and a half years working as a technical support agent, answering chats and emails, phone calls, helping out the customers over remote desktops, like TeamViewer - the usual support gig. The QA role I did at the time was strictly manual, not very demanding but I did have a nice time doing it, I had a great team, learned a f...

I listen to a lot of podcasts (coding and testing related mostly) in my spare time and while listening to Ministry of Testing podcast I heard about these 30 day testing challenges they have.  I decided to got with the 30 days of API testing challenge first as the topic of API's interests me greatly - in terms of both professional and personal curiosity.  Day 1 Found a definition of API testing: “API testing involves testing the application programming interfaces (APIs) directly and as part of integration testing to determine if they meet expectations for functionality, reliability, performance, and security.” Day 2 For API exploratory testing I'd use Postman, the course I started on it seems like a good idea now. Day 3 I started reading a book on API testing, by Alan Richardson, the dude behind the Evil Tester podcast, the name ain't "good" but the content is! 😀 Day 4 I really like the MDN's explanation of HTTP protocol, ...

Very recently I took the ISTQB (CTFL 2018) certification exam - and failed it by missing only one question, 26 correct answers is the passing grade, and I had 25.. If you also do not wish to pass the exam, keep reading I'll share a few tips bellow that are guaranteed to work! So, let's start! Procrastinate and delay scheduling the exam for as long as possible - by registering for exam you will set a deadline for yourself and it will be a constant reminder for you to keep learning consistently on a regular basis. Why would you want that? Study all by yourself - if you surround yourself with other people who are learning the same thing it will be much easier, and we don't want that now do we...? Forget about reading books and the syllabus - the textbook “ Foundation of Software Testing: ISTQB Certification ” by Rex Black, Dorothy Graham is a very useful resource and so is the official syllabus, why waste time with helpful resources? Ignore the glossary whe...

I didn't have time for blogging lately as not too long ago I started learning test automation, prior to that I worked a QA, albeit as a manual tester, so my knowledge of automation was theoretical, and very limited - at best. Don't get me wrong, I'm still just a beginner at it, but now I have an idea of what's what and I'm learning new stuff pretty much every day. I'm mostly focusing on automation with C#, using NUnit and Selenium, which is also proving to be a really good chance to get more acquainted with Visual Studio, which I've used only casually before. Now apart from learning the specifics of automation I try to watch a course or a two on Visual Studio, being someone who was primarily learning web development and using light text editors (I've used Atom, Notepad++, Sublime and mostly VSCode) I'm truly impressed with the power of Visual Studio - the Enterprise edition in particular! I've done a few online tutorials, but th...