My Article Series

A list of my article series for convenient access

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/vectors/writer-freelancer-article-letter-7631703/

 Table of Contents:
 ∘ My Innovative Solution to …
 ∘ Optimize Selenium WebDriver Automated Test Scripts
 ∘ Benefits of Continuous Testing
 ∘ Software Design Pattern by Example
 ∘ Correcting Wrong "Playwright’s Advantage over Selenium"
 ∘ Functional Test Refactoring
 ∘ Bad Test Automation Frameworks/Tools
 ∘ My Predictions on E2E Test Automation Technology Trends
 ∘ Reflections
 ∘ Financial Freedom
 ∘ IT Terminology Clarified
 ∘ Agile
 ∘ Correct Misconceptions, Lies, …
 ∘ Practical Advice
 ∘ Vs.
 ∘ Stories
 ∘ What Makes My Articles Unique?
 ∘ Case Studies - Automation
 ∘ Case Studies - Selenium
 ∘ Case Studies - Performance/Load Testing

My Innovative Solution to …

Unlike many tech bloggers, I take a hands-on approach and have developed innovative solutions to tackle challenges in Test Automation, Continuous Testing, and Agile Software Development.

• Test Automation: Keep the Browser Open after Executing an Individual Test

• Test Automation: ‘The Simpsons’ Data Reset Pattern

• Test Automation: Run the same test against a different browser with a click of a button

• Test Automation: Run the same test against a different server with a click of a button

• Software Development: Versioned Database Migration

• Test Automation: TestWise IDE

• Load Testing: Run Selenium Tests (real browser) in a CT Server with Parallel Execution for better Load Testing

• Test Automation: Easy Wait in test scripts

• Test Automation: Debug Automated E2E Web Test Scripts Intuitively and Proficiently

• Test Automation: Attach test execution to the existing browser

• Continuous Testing: Let Business Analysts Self-help Create Data in a BuildWise CT Server

• Continuous Testing: Parallel Automated End-to-End Test Execution

• Continuous Testing: Auto-Retry

• Agile: Automation-Assisted Showcase

• My Simple Approach to App Health Check with Automation

• My Universal, High-Efficient and Free Approach to API Testing

• …

Optimize Selenium WebDriver Automated Test Scripts

Working automated test scripts is only the first test step to successful test automation. As automated tests are executed often and the application changes frequently too, it is important that test scripts need to be fast, easy to maintain and read.

• Optimize Selenium WebDriver Automated Test Scripts: Speed

• Optimize Selenium WebDriver Automated Test Scripts: Maintainability

• Optimize Selenium WebDriver Automated Test Scripts: Readability

Benefits of Continuous Testing

Continuous Testing (enables software teams to push software updates to production daily, not fake CI/CD talks. Check out “Continuous Integration at Facebook” and AgileWay Continuous Testing Grading) is the heart of the software development process. It benefits all software project stakeholders.

1. Part 1: to Wise Executives
2. Part 2: to Wise Managers
3. Part 3: to Wise Business Analysts
4. Part 4: to Wise Developers
5. Part 5: to Wise Testers
6. Part 6: to Happy Customers

Software Design Pattern by Example

Design Patterns are good practices in object-oriented (OO) software design. Applying appropriate design patterns will help design your software better. However, design patterns are not easy to master, it was the case for me, and my daughter as well when she started an IT degree at Uni. I wrote a series of articles to help her learn Design Patterns quickly. My approach is to use easy-to-understand exercises, which I believe is an easier way to master design patterns.

• Software Design Pattern By Example: Singleton

• Software Design Pattern By Example: Strategy

• Software Design Pattern By Example: Template Method

Correcting Wrong “Playwright’s Advantage over Selenium”

Recently, I watched a YouTube video, “Playwright vs Selenium: What Advantages Make Playwright the Winner in Automation Testing Battle 🏆”.
Each of the presenter’s purported “Playwright Advantages” is either wrong or irrelevant in the context of real web test automation. I will elaborate on each of these points in this article series:

1. 🎖 “Playwright is Modern and Faster than Selenium” 😒

2. “Playwright has Parallel Execution Support” 👎🏽

3. “Playwright has Native Auto-Waiting Mechanism” 👎🏽

4. “Playwright has a native test runner” 👎🏽

5. “Playwright has native HTML Reporters” 👎🏽

6. “Playwright Features Can be Configured in one Configuration” 👎🏽

7. “Playwright supports a range of Testing Types, e.g. API Testing, Component Testing, …” 👎🏽

8. “Playwright UI Mode, CodeGen, Debugging support.” 👎🏽

9. “Playwright ARIA locator support” 👎🏽

10. “Playwright has frequent releases” 👎🏽

11. Wrap Up

Functional Test Refactoring

Automated test scripts are often poorly designed, inefficient, and hard to understand and maintain, i.e., the same issues we found in code. Functional Test Refactoring is a process of enhancing the quality of automated functional test scripts.

1. Functional Test Refactoring: Introduction

2. Functional Test Refactoring: Extract Function

3. Functional Test Refactoring: Move to Helper

4. Functional Test Refactoring: Move

5. Functional Test Refactoring: Extract to Page Function

6. Functional Test Refactoring: Introduce to Page Object

7. Functional Test Refactoring: Rename

Bad Test Automation Frameworks/Tools

• Why Cypress sucks for real test automation? (Part 1)

• Why Cypress Sucks for Real Test Automation? (Part 2: Limitations)

• Why Gherkin (Cucumber, SpecFlow,…) Always Failed with UI Test Automation?

• Protractor.js is dead, What did we learn?

• Katalon Codeless Test Automation vs Selenium WebDriver by Example

My Predictions on E2E Test Automation Technology Trends

There are many so-called test automation consultants and experts who lack hands-on experience with daily UI test automation. They often introduce fancy terminologies that usually prove to be misguided. In contrast, nearly all of my predictions about E2E Test Automation have been accurate—or are steadily being validated.

• Record/Playback in Test Automation is Bad, mostly.

• Why Test Automation Tool with Runtime License is Evil?

• If AI Could Really Do Real E2E Test Automation, What Would You (Software Engineer in Test) Do for Living?

• Codeless Test Automation is Irrational

• Protractor, another Automation Framework I rightly avoided, is being Deprecated

• Why Fake Automated Testers and Software Test Architects Love ‘Headless Browser Testing’?

• Script-less Automated End-to-End Testing is Silly, Doomed to Fail!

• ChatGPT is Useless for Real Test Automation

• A Follow-Up Question for AI Test Automation Fans: Did you actually implement Real UI Test Automation with ChapGPT or like, before ChatGPT’s first anniversary? (2023-11-24)

• QA Engineers, Stay Out of Cypress Component Testing, for Your Own Sake!

• Why Visual Regression Testing is Wrong, Mostly?

• Why do I prefer Selenium (Ruby) over Watir?

• Why I Don’t Use Selenium-Grid?

Reflections

• Reflections: Software Industry Really Lacks Testing and Engineering Culture

• One Decision I Wish I had made Earlier: “Not Working for Others on Wednesdays.”

• An Event Changed Me to Work for Myself: Attending One Former Colleague’s Funeral

• Why Are Good Writing Skills Important for Good Software Engineers?

• The Power of Role Models

• Reflections: Software Industry Really Lacks Testing and Engineering Culture

• Overcoming Fear in Writing: A Personal Journey to Becoming an Accomplished Author

Financial Freedom

• The Importance of Passive Income

• The Joy of Small Passive Income

• What is Better Than Passive Income? Continuous Passive Income.

• A Book Changed Me to Get on the Journey to Achieve Financial Freedom

• I Just Had a 2.5-month Vacation, Feeling Truly Free for the First Time.

• Work Anytime, Work Anywhere and Work Independently

• What Work Can I Do as an Independent “Digital Nomad”?

IT Terminology Clarified

In software development, particularly in software testing, there are many terminologies that are used wrongly by IT professionals.

1. Unit Testing Clarified

2. User Story Card Clarified

3. Regression Testing Clarified

4. Cross Browser Testing Clarified

5. Headless Browser Testing Clarified

6. ‘Data-Driven Testing’ Clarified

7. ‘Shift Left Testing’ Clarified

8. Continuous Testing Clarified

9. Full-Stack Software Engineer Clarified

10. Testing Pyramid Clarified

11. BDD Clarified: BDD ≠ “Given-When-Then” (Gherkin)

12. Codeless Test Automation is Irrational

13. “Done, Done” in Agile

14. Fake End-to-End Test Automation Clarified

15. In-Sprint Test Automation Clarified

16. CI/CD (Pipeline) Clarified

17. DevOps Clarified

18. Test Automation Clarified

19. “Release Early, Release Often” Clarified

20. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Clarified

21. “Daily Production Releases” Clarified

22. Testing Center of Excellence Clarified

23. Code Commenting Clarified

24. Side Hustle Clarified

25. Why I don’t use Test Management Tools at all?

26. Execution Speed of Automated End-to-End (via UI) Testing Clarified

27. Record/Playback in Test Automation is Bad, mostly

28. User Acceptance Testing Clarified

29. Auto-Waiting in Web Test Automation Clarified

30. Three Types of Efforts in E2E (UI) Test Automation Clarified

Agile

• Agile Certifications are Wrong!

• Agile Coaches / Scrum Masters Shall be Technically Excellent or understand the importance of…

• Use UI Automation to Assist Agile Showcases

• Are ‘Agile Coach’ and ‘SCRUM Master’ Being Deprecated?

• Be Aware of Processes Introduced by Fake Agile Consultants

• Why is Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®) Wrong?

• Agile Project Management: You Cannot Lower the Quality

• How to Expose Fake UI Test Automation in Fake Agile companies?

• Challenge a Recent Study Claiming “268% higher failure rates for Agile Software Projects”

• Can Your Project Manager / Agile Coach / Scrum Master Confidently Demonstrate the Main Business Flow of Your App?

Correct Misconceptions, Lies, …

1. “Using the Coding Language for End-to-End Test Automation”

2. “Setting up Selenium is Complex and Time-Consuming” with a benchmark test.

3. End-to-End Test Automation is “Simple and Easy” or “Complex and Impossible”

4. Expose a Common Lie, “Selenium is Flaky”, Part 2: Clarify ‘automated waiting’

Practical Advice

• Exit Strategy for Cypress Testers

• A Practical Advice on Rejecting Gherkin for Test Automation

• A Practical Advice to Shorten Daily Stand-up Meetings in Software Projects

• My secret of near 100% interview success on Test Automation Engineer roles

Vs.

• Katalon Codeless Test Automation vs Selenium WebDriver by Example

• Selenium vs X, Y, Z, …, all these years

• Cypress vs Selenium WebDriver Comparison by Example

• Selenium WebDriver vs. Playwright in a Nutshell

• Playwright vs Selenium Speed Comparison

• Playwright vs Selenium WebDriver Syntax Comparison by Example

• Doer vs. Talker in End-to-End Test Automation

• Fakes vs (Stubs & Mocks) in Software Integration Testing

• “One Team One Dream” vs “Another Day Another Dollar”

• Software Engineer Choices: Permanent Employee vs. Contractor vs Micro-ISV:
  - Part 1: Employee
  - Part 2: Contractor
  - Part 3: Micro-ISV

Stories

• A Story of 100X API Testing I Implemented in a Matter of Days

• A Story: “Promised E2E Test Automation Training Never Came”

• Story: “What is the Most Challenging in E2E Test Automation?”

• A Story of ~Unit, a Failed Developer-Created E2E Automation Framework I Witnessed

• An Unbelievable True Story: People’s Fixation on an Obviously Failed “Self-Created” Test Automation Framework

• A Story of a Veteran Manual Tester’s Learning Test Automation from a Coach: “One Question per Day”

• One Lesson for My Daughter By Allowing Her to Buy a Useless Hyped Product Influenced by Social Media

• My Journey into the World of Performance and Load Testing

• An IT Graduate’s Frustration with a Fake ‘Senior Test Automation Engineer’

• How did my daughter get her first job at FAANG?

• From First Selenium Test at the Age of 12 to Published Author: My Daughter’s Ten-Year Journey in E2E Test Automation

• An Interesting Story: One Project Manager Requested a Discount on One of My Books Three Times Over the Course of Three Years

• A Story: One Former Mentee Failed Test Automation with Protractor

What Makes My Articles Unique?

• Part 1: Originally for my daughter and myself.

• Part 2: Not Striving to be a Techfluencer

• Part 3: Don’t Expect to Earn a Living from Writing

• Part 4: From rare combinations of experience, hands-on experience in various roles (upcoming)

• Part 5: Being Direct and unafraid to say what others won’t, and most of my predictions are later proven correct, (upcoming)

• Part 6: Responding to Public Requests for Assistance on E2E Test Automation (upcoming)

Case Studies - Automation

• Case Study: Extract All Substack Article Titles and Links

  • Part A: Extract Article Data

  • Part B: Extract 25 articles on one page

  • Part C: Extract All

  • Part D: Generate HTML and Publish

  • Part E: Annotation by Zhimin *

• Case Study: Automation Script to Extract the Top 10 Authors featured in the Software Testing Newsletters

• Case Study: Count the number of "shakes" within "Shake it Off""s lyrics on a webpage.

• Case Study: Use Selenium To Extract A List of Published Medium Article Titles

Case Studies - Selenium

• Case Study: User Change Password Automated Test

• Case Study: User Login Tests in Selenium WebDriver

• Case Study: User Reset Password via Email in Selenium WebDriver

• Case Study: User Sign up Automated Test in Selenium WebDriver

• Case Study: Wait for File Download to Complete Safely in Selenium

• Case Study: Migrate Cypress API Tests to Ruby

• Case Study: Locator Chaining in Selenium WebDriver

• Case Study: Automated Testing "Login with Remember Me" in Selenium WebDriver

• Case Study: A Reliable Test Statement to Locate A Non-Unique Button

• Case Study: Simulate Two Users with Selenium Automation Scripts

Case Studies - Performance/Load Testing

• Case Study: Mechanize Performance/Load Testing User Login with CSRF Token Protection

• Case Study: Continuous Performance Testing

• Case Study: JMeter Performance/Load Testing User Login with CSRF Token Protection