« Knit 1, Perl 2... »
I Know As Much About Perl Programming As I Do Knitting And That Isn't a Bad Thing!
I have been doing QA for 7 years now and believe I have the essential skills that make for a solid QA analyst, however I do not possess the skills that would make me a basic developer. I feel that if I gain some knowledge of the technology our developers use I can better represent the customer in the development process. Codesta is very supportive of this in the way that the company grants us personal time to learn new technology and skills. I have made several attempts to go outside my skill set and role to bring something new to my QA tool shed. While I haven’t brought back the tool I intentionally set out to learn, I have brought back several other tools that have benefited both my testing skills and my knowledge of technologies our development team uses.
My journey into the realm outside my QA skill set started when I was in-between projects and I wanted to learn anything about a platform our development team uses. This brought me to PHP (www.php.net). A colleague tells me “PHP is easy. It shouldn't be a problem for you.”. Ha! I gave it a valiant effort but quickly realized how deep I was when I didn't understand some of the basics of HTML and was thrashing about in PHP land. What I learned here was that I needed to learn something basic about coding and that PHP needed more of a knowledge base and comprehension than I possessed.
PHP brought me to HTML. Now this was something that I thought I was grasping. I found http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_intro.asp and I was off. I was learning about basic tags, links, images, and tables to name a few. I definitely felt like I was getting the hang of it even going so far as to use my new found knowledge of HTML tables to help with the creation of automated test suites in Selenium. More on the Selenium side of the story in a bit. So there I was making HTML tables with all my Selenium test cases in them to create a giant Selenium test suite. I was on fire. I took the HTML quiz at http://www.w3schools.com/quiztest/quiztest.asp?qtest=HTML and got a 100%! I then had to put my HTML mastery on hold as a project came up that needed my attention. For the purpose of this blog I went back and took the HTML quiz again. I got a 65%. The lesson I learned is "use it or loose it". I need to use my newly acquired skill often or risk forgetting key points.
As mentioned above Selenium (http://selenium.openqa.org/) is an automated web testing tool that has become an invaluable part of my QA testing tool shed. You can use basic HTML to write Selenium tests or for the non-coding inclined Selenium has a plug-in for FireFox called Selenium IDE (http://selenium-ide.openqa.org/). This plug-in basically lets you click a button to start recording user navigation around a website or application and “Play” those steps back letting you know if a test passes or fails. I have been using this testing format extensively for acceptance and bug regression tests. Acceptance tests on a website, for example, would be running through all pages verifying site navigation and external links are functioning correctly. This cuts down the time it takes me to do this manually and frees me up to look deeper into the product to find possible issues. As for bug regression, I find a bug and log it along with a Selenium test case. I do this so the developer can run the test which contains the specific steps I used to find the bug and they can not say a bug is fixed until the Selenium test passes. I learned that a more “user friendly” technology can help you learn a more difficult technology.
In my latest attempt to bring something new to my tool shed, I was tasked with learning how to use Perl (www.perl.org) to parse Apache (www.apache.org) access_logs to create reports of website load times. I bought a book to help me learn Perl and give me some insight. I proceeded to Google my fingers off looking for someone who had done it before. What I found was many people had done it before but for some reason their Perl scripts would not work for me. I started looking for help, asking my peers for assistance and getting some answers that I just couldn't comprehend. I realized I was back in the same place as I was with PHP. I felt like I should really be able to understand it but I just couldn't. In the process, however, I became comfortable using the command line and I have a better understanding of what code is supposed to do. Despite my struggles, I believe that these are steps in the right direction for me.
My QA tool shed has a lot of room for all kinds of tools. Some I am not ready for and some may never make it into the shed. This won’t stop me from trying Perl or PHP again. Maybe something else I embark on will tie into either of them. In the case of Selenium IDE, it brought me back to HTML and the little bit I was able to learn there has helped me tremendously. All in all, I learned that even if you set out to learn something that is outside of your role and fail you probably picked up something useful along the way.
Share | 3 Comments |
Reader Comments (3)
Big discount for Christmas! Hi man, boardwalk empire, sons of anarchy true blood for you to stimulate your manliness, sharing this hero feast! Hi, woman, sex and the city to teach you how to be a charming woman, desperate housewives to remind you to get out of the desperate strange swirl to hold women’s freedom and dependent! Hi, children, enjoy your fairy tale kingdom, to explore with brave and courageous Sinba in The Lion King Trilogy, to get involve to the life of superstar in Hannah Montana, or enjoy the magic world in Wizards of Waverly Place! Hi, lovers, how about snuggle together to share the romantic time with each other to watching romantic comedies, like How I Met Your Mother? All these great dvds available in collectcheaps with big discount just for those people holding profound love in heart.
Sons of Guns DVD set
At the same time, the investigation<h1>Coach Outlet</h1> that led the United States to <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>the bank, the Lebanese Canadian<h1>Chanel Handbags</h1> Bank, provides new insights <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>into the murky sources of<h1>Coach Outlet</h1> Hezbollah’s money. While law enforcement <h1>Chanel Bags</h1>agencies around the world <h1>Coach Factory Outlet</h1>have long believed that <h1>Coach Outlet Online</h1>Hezbollah is a passive beneficiary <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>of contributions from loyalists <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>abroad involved in drug trafficking <h1>Coach Outlet Online</h1>and a grab bag of other<h1>Louis Vuitton Bags</h1> criminal enterprises, intelligence <h1>Coach Factory Outlet</h1>from several countries points <h1>Louis Vuitton Bags</h1>to the direct involvement of <h1>Coach Factory Store</h1>high-level Hezbollah officials <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>in the South American cocaine<h1>Coach Factory Outlet</h1> trade.One agent involved in the<h1>Coach Outlet Store</h1> investigation compared Hezbollah <h1>Coach Factory Outlet</h1>to the Mafia, saying, “They <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>operate like the Gambinos on <h1>Chanel Bags</h1>steroids.”On Tuesday, federal <h1>Chanel Bags</h1>prosecutors in Virginia announced <h1>Louis Vuitton</h1>the indictment of the man <h1>Coach Factory Store</h1>at the center of the Lebanese<h1>Chanel Handbags</h1> Canadian Bank case, charging <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>that he had trafficked drugs <h1>Chanel Bags</h1>and laundered money not only <h1>Louis Vuitton</h1>for Colombian cartels, but also for<h1>Coach Factory Online</h1> the murderous Mexican gang <h1>Coach Outlet</h1>Los Zetas.The revelations about <h1>Chanel Bags</h1>Hezbollah and the Lebanese Canadian<h1>Coach Outlet</h1> Bank reflect the changing <h1>Louis Vuitton Bags</h1>political and military dynamics<h1>Coach Factory Outlet</h1> of Lebanon and the Middle East. <h1>Chanel Bags</h1>American intelligence analysts believe<h1>Coach Factory</h1> that for years Hezbollah
<h1>discount designer bags</h1> cheap and fashion
<h1>designer inspired handbags</h1> Acclaimed
<h1>air max 2011</h1> high quality
<h1>nike shox tl3</h1> wholesale nike
<h1>women puma shoes</h1> Particular style
<h1>air max tn</h1> Different
<h1>puma shoes</h1> Very famous
<h1>puma shoes online</h1> Popular brands
<h1>women timberland boots</h1> A great feeling
<h1>wholesale gucci shoes</h1> Online Sales