Welcome to the 251st issue!

In case you missed it — GitHub Copilot is free!

The free version works with Visual Studio Code and includes 2000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month.

And if you want to learn how to take advantage of that in testing — I've featured a few articles about it.

Happy holidays! 🎄

Dawid Dylowicz  

The Future of Testing: Watch the Recording

The rapid rise of AI is revolutionizing how we build applications, and AI-driven features are becoming increasingly pervasive — demanding innovative testing strategies. Watch the recorded keynote from Experience 2024 to see what's in store for testers in 2025.

mabl.com  

Four Frames for Testing

Michael Bolton started a thought-provoking series of articles with the goal of explaining what testing is really about. You can also read part 2 about risks and part 3 about development cycles.

developsense.com  

Measuring the Cost of Production Issues on Development Teams

This is interesting. David Tran took a pragmatic approach to creating a simple but creative calculator for measuring the cost of bugs.

Moreover, Gil Zilberfeld wrote a good one about taking One Economic Decision At A Time in testing.

towardsdatascience.com  

The nine skills of exploratory testing

Joep Schuurkes wonderfully described what it takes to become good at exploratory testing.

Similarly, Julia Kocbek has tons of tips on Test smart: How to explore a product like Sherlock.

smallsheds.garden  

Web of Causation and why I don't like 5 Whys

This is a sobering reminder from Patrick Prill about the pitfalls of using the popular 5 Whys method to find the root cause of an issue.

In relation to that, someone asked the community — What is a "tester's mindset"?.

wordpress.com  

Design Patterns in Action

Raj Uppadhyay started a great series showing real, detailed examples of design patterns in test automation frameworks. You can follow it by reading the part 2 and part 3.

medium.com  

End-to-End Testing an AI Application with Playwright and GitHub Actions

Wondering how to test an AI app? Jacob Habib explains how to achieve that with Playwright.

Furthermore, Chamila Ambahera provides a Practical example of Automating Testing of AI-generated content.

hashnode.dev  

From Chaos to Control: How Data-Gen Streamlined Our Testing Pipeline

Accurate test data is a key to successful test automation. Kubra Cebbar and Alper Ersayın share their journey to achieving this by building a custom data-generation solution.

Also, another challenge you might face in testing might be about Flipping the Switch: Automating Feature Flag Testing, as Irfan Mujagić explains.

medium.com  

The test automation quadrant, or a different way to look at your tests

If you're looking for another approach to test automation, this is an intriguing model created by Bas Dijkstra that evaluates the test efficiency and value.

Also, Masud Parvez outlines a few important Things I consider before starting test automation.

ontestautomation.com  

Why and How to Use Snapshot Tests in AWS CDK

How would you test for unwanted infrastructure changes? Jannik Wempe demonstrates how to do it using Jest snapshots.

jannikwempe.com  

How good is GitHub Copilot at generating Playwright code?

Stefan Judis shows the pros and cons of using GitHub Copilot for writing Playwright tests. And since it's now free, why not try it out yourself?

checklyhq.com  

Playwright Visual Tests with GIT-LFS and Docker

Visual testing at scale can quickly grow in size. Adam Pajda developed an interesting approach to handling Playwright visual tests by storing them in Git Large File Storage.

medium.com  

Requestly — an API Client is More Secure and Better Than Postman

Looking for an open-source API client? Anmol Baranwal describes the functionality and security benefits of using Requestly.

hashnode.dev  

Unlocking Playwright's Potential: Features for daily basis

Kostiantyn Teltov shares lots of tips for Playwright tests, explaining each one with helpful examples.

Similarly, Rajesh Sharma wrote about Boosting Testing Efficiency with Playwright: Simple and Effective Tips.

medium.com  

Great careers advice for testers — A Review of "The Software Testers Journey"

If you're looking for a read during this holiday break, Mike Harris reviewed the just-released book called The Software Tester's Journey, which mainly focuses on various career opportunities.

home.blog  

No tests, no problem... 😂

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