Another short update on what I have been up to in the second half\u00a0 of October \u2013 mid November\u00a0 2019.<\/p>\n
In the end of\u00a0 of October 2019 I had another\u00a0 zoom meeting with creators of the software product I have been testing<\/a> as an intern for the previous 2 months. Guess what, it turned to a payed internship . It is not a full-time\u00a0 job, I know,\u00a0 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\u00a0 project can be found in my portfolio<\/a>. Here’s the list of things that I got\u00a0 by participating in that project<\/p>\n What’s next? I will be doing manual testing\u00a0 over the next several months. I also plan to continue to learn automation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n As I learn testing and Automation I see a lot of\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n This\u00a0 what motivated me to complete this\u00a0 short, yet very beginner-friendly\u00a0 and clear\u00a0 GitHub Course\u00a0 by James Williamson<\/a>\u00a0Highly recommend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another course that I decided to\u00a0 do is Unix for Mac OS X Users by\u00a0 Kevin Skoglund\u00a0<\/a>. It is good for beginners. Each lesson is no longer\u00a0 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).\u00a0<\/p>\n So far I got familiar with several languages including HTML, CSS, Java, Javascript, Groovy.\u00a0 However, the only tool that I actually used\u00a0 to create automated test was Selenium IDE.<\/p>\n “It is relatively easy to use tool and you do not have to write a lot of code. Do you think\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There is a number of reasons he mentioned in favor of Python:<\/p>\n 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<\/a> page – I will be adding Python resources as well.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u00a0 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\u00a0 daughter also requires time and sometimes can be quite stressful.<\/p>\n All that makes it really hard to find time and energy to keep learning\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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\u00a0 reasons why I chosen to start a challenge was grreat article\u00a0 that I read\u00a0 on freecodecamp.<\/a><\/p>\n We’ll see how it goes . So far I passed 17 days and haven’t skipped a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n As always, I’ve come a cross lots of\u00a0 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\u00a0 in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
GitHub Course<\/h1>\n
Unix for Mac OS X Users Course,<\/h1>\n
Learning Python<\/h1>\n
\n
Hundred Days of Testing and Automation Challenge<\/h1>\n
Tools,\u00a0 Courses, Random Links on Testing<\/h1>\n
\n