Testing Internship,  GitHub Course, Unix for Mac OS X Users Course, Learning Python, Hundred Days of Testing and Automation Challenge

Another short update on what I have been up to in the second half  of October – mid November  2019.

 

Testing Internship

In the end of  of October 2019 I had another  zoom meeting with creators of the software product I have been testing as an intern for the previous 2 months. Guess what, it turned to a payed internship . It is not a full-time  job, I know,  I will be working from home just 8-12 hours per week for the next 6 months. Yet, I am really excited that my strategy delivered valuable results. Despite my struggles with time and money, my decision to find and volunteer for start-up turned out to work well. More details about this  project can be found in my portfolio. Here’s the list of things that I got  by participating in that project

  • got more experience in manual testing
  • got better in writing test cases
  • improved my ability to write bug reports 
  • improved my ability to manage my time and plan testing activities
  • improved my ability to communicate. 

What’s next? I will be doing manual testing  over the next several months. I also plan to continue to learn automation.  

GitHub Course

As I learn testing and Automation I see a lot of  resources/tools/products on GitHub. Yet, it’s been very disappointing to not understand how I can use them and how I can use GitHub.

I heard it a lot from developers and testers -” Automation is a development project “. That means, if I want to become an Automation Engineer, I need to be able to use GitHub – the most popular version control tool and place where people collaborate, share knowledge and learn about programming. 

This  what motivated me to complete this  short, yet very beginner-friendly  and clear  GitHub Course  by James Williamson Highly recommend. 

Unix for Mac OS X Users Course,

Another course that I decided to  do is Unix for Mac OS X Users by  Kevin Skoglund . It is good for beginners. Each lesson is no longer  than 3-5 minutes so I was able to consume it in small chunks. Very helpful especially when I have no much time after work (which happens quite often). 

Learning Python

So far I got familiar with several languages including HTML, CSS, Java, Javascript, Groovy.  However, the only tool that I actually used  to create automated test was Selenium IDE.

“It is relatively easy to use tool and you do not have to write a lot of code. Do you think  it makes sense to use it to convert test cases which I currently perform manually? “. I asked this questions one of my mentors, test automation engineer with several years of experience. What he advised me is to use Python instead.  There is a number of reasons he mentioned in favor of Python:

  • -easy to learn
  • -has large number of libraries including  libraries for testing 
  • -easy to find answers (large community)
  • -lots of other people use Python for testing 
  • -can be used for all 3 layers  of  Test Pyramid: UI, Service(Integration), Unit testing. 

So it’s been couple of weeks since I started to learn Python and so far I like it. Especially, because there are so many great resources to learn that language. Make sure to check my resources page – I will be adding Python resources as well.

Hundred Days of Testing and Automation Challenge

I feel really excited about learning programming and automation. However, there are a lot of struggles. Time and motivation are the biggest ones for me. 

Currently I have 2 part time jobs (not related to IT) and my testing internship. That’s 2 days +2 days +1 day . On top of that I have  my Amazon FBA (e-commerce project) which takes a lot of time and efforts. I also produce a podcast every 3-4 weeks (collaboration project). Looking after my 7-year  daughter also requires time and sometimes can be quite stressful.

All that makes it really hard to find time and energy to keep learning  Test Automation. I’ve been thinking a lot trying to find a solution on how to reach my goals in testing faster and keep developing my skills. 

I can say that finally I got kind of strategy. Beside other things, I decided to start “100 days of testing and automation” challenge. I think consistency is the key and this is a great way to practice on regularly and stay motivated. One of the  reasons why I chosen to start a challenge was grreat article  that I read  on freecodecamp.

We’ll see how it goes . So far I passed 17 days and haven’t skipped a day. 

Tools,  Courses, Random Links on Testing

As always, I’ve come a cross lots of  interesting online resources related to testing and automation. Some of them might be quite handy one day. So I just list them here to save links and make it easier for myself to find them  in the future.

 

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