Welcome to the 190th issue!

Among all the recent worries about the future of testers — given the expansion of AI, the difficult job market and burnouts — I found this positive thread relieving:

What do you like about QA?

Personally, I enjoy the most working on different challenges, varying from engineering to people, and finding problems that others missed.

And what about you?

Happy testing! 🙂

PS. You may also check out a similar reflection that I shared a while ago.

Dawid Dylowicz  

UPDATED: Testmo — #1 Unified Test Management Tool

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testmo.com  

7 Things I Hate As A Tester

So, contrary to the question in the Comment section of this issue, Jayateerth Katti lists some things he doesn't enjoy so much about being a tester. Do you agree?

Perhaps one of the things to do is to Smash the Barrier Between Development and QA, as per Dennis Martinez's advice.

medium.com  

My attempt to demystify the main argument against dedicated test specialists

Alan Page shares his opinion on why testers are not the only ones who can test and what benefits it brings when developers take over.

Also, someone on Reddit raised an interesting Argument: QAs are better suited to be part of Business Function.

substack.com  

Performance Testing: Unspoken KPIs and The Missing Correlation

Ravisuriya Eswara started a series of articles on performance engineering. I enjoyed this one about KPIs as well as the next one about Prioritizing Performance & Its Requirements — The Two Engineering Tasks.

blogspot.com  

The Impactful Tester

What should testers do to be the most impactful in their job? Gil Avraham gives some great pieces of advice.

Similarly, Callum Akehurst-Ryan wrote a decent one about Career Progression in Testing: The Awesome Power of Influence.

medium.com  

Things I wish I knew as a QA engineer leaving a Corporation for a Startup

Having worked in both environments, I can relate to Elena Kolbanova reflections on working for small and big companies as a tester.

Also, Denis Peganov rightly explains Why Agile is Essential in Testing and What Happens Without It.

medium.com  

ChatGPT Sucks for Test Automation

If you followed Jason Arbon's content, you'd have known by now he's a big promoter of AI in testing. So it may surprise you to hear the critique of using ChatGPT for test automation, right? Well, read why!

As a follow-up read, I recommend Michael Bolton's articles about A Reply to "Running a crowd-sourced experiment on using LLMs for testing", including the Part 2: Analysis.

medium.com  

Design Patterns in Test Automation — Part 2

Anji Boddupally shares the second part of examples of design patterns that can be used during test automation.

Moreover, Earl Lacsamana explains very well the concept of Test-Driven Development: A Different Way to Achieve Quality Code.

medium.com  

Do you write SQL as a QA engineer?

Working with databases and writing SQL is something that you may encounter in your job as a tester. But how often? The testing community replies.

reddit.com  

Empowering Web Automation: A Journey of Modernize Web Automation Framework

Facing a challenge to develop a modern test automation solution, Rio Anggara Pratama shares the motive, story and evaluation they did to choose the right tools and CI solution.

medium.com  

Writing Flexible and Maintainable Test Code: Harnessing the Power of Generics

While the DRY approach is not always recommended in test automation, sometimes it's handy to use the features of languages such as Java or C# that allow you to write generic, reusable code. Gil Avraham gives a few good examples of that.

stackademic.com  

TestingPod Blog: Latest QA Insights and Ideas

Stay on top of the dynamic world of QA with our latest articles. Uncover expert perspectives on topics like leveraging LLMs and AI for testing, implementing test automation, and crafting impeccable test documents. Read and subscribe here!

magicpod.com  

From Breaking to Repairing: Using Performance Tests to Strengthen Your System

Andrea Fuentes tells us about the importance of performance testing and shows how to set up and run such tests with JMeter.

Similarly, Srinivas Nali explains how to use AWS Lambda load testing with JMeter.

medium.com  

Locust — Python Code construct-based Load Testing Tool

If you're looking for a modern, open-source performance testing tool, here's a solid getting-started guide to Locust by Virendra Oswal.

medium.com  

Supercharging API Tests with Mocha: Introducing Delayed Retries and Test Skipping

Jeevakirtan Palanisamy shows how to implement a custom, smart retry mechanism for your tests with Mocha.

Moreover, you may also want to use A Flexible Method for Retrying Selenium Operations.

medium.com  

Dev's reaction to a bug... 😂

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

Dawid Dylowicz