Ever wondered why you automate? Pause for a moment and ask yourself, “Why do I code?” 🤔💭

- Because I will have a cool title and more money? 😎💰The current market indeed pays more for people with coding skills (test code is still code!). But this is not the reason we automate, or at least it shouldn’t be!
- Because it is cool? Do you want to be in the “cool kids” club? This is also often the case, but not the right rationale…
- Because it’s fun, interesting, and challenging? True that, but it is still a wrong motive! 😄

So what is the proper reason?...
read more
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-point-test-automation-ivan-karaman-wsdrf/

Do you prefer to create your test data on:
- hell
- nightmare
- normal
- or easy?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/4-difficulty-levels-creating-test-data-ivan-karaman-6ugtc/

Always ask yourself: “Am I doing something dumb?” 🤔
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/question-ask-yourself-ivan-karaman-s3smc

What House M.D. tv show taught us (applicable for testing)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lessons-from-house-md-tv-show-help-you-better-tester-ivan-karaman-vvoyc

Testing pyramid (yet another explanation, this time using "fishing" as analogy!)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/levels-testing-test-pyramid-explained-fish-ivan-karaman-xhflc

Reminders for 2024 (but it is applicable all the time) for testers!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-reminders-testers-2024-ivan-karaman-uri5e

Simple example on how to automate 2FA code generation!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automating-2fa-hard-impossible-ivan-karaman-esgfc

I think a lot of people use wrong words when they talk about testing...

Imagine a phrase: "I do a positive exploratory black box ui system acceptance test"
...and this is not a gibberish, it makes some sense! All these words describe "different kinds" of testing, so using them in one sentence is ok (at least grammatically 😁).

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/software-testing-categories-ivan-karaman-wrr2c

Pesticide paradox is one of the things every tester encounters quite early in their career. But are you using an original definition, or a distorted ISTQB one? 😜

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/paradox-pesticide-ivan-karaman-8nayc/

What is a "test automation framework"?
Good question!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mythical-beast-called-test-automation-framework-ivan-karaman-teq4c

What if I tell you that "testing in production" happens no matter if you do it or not? Customers do it for you, haha! 😂

Is it a good idea for you to do it or do you need to rely more on observability (spoiler: the latter!)?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/testing-production-yes-observability-ivan-karaman-plfbc/

Practical guide on naming things while coding.
Use this pattern:
Horrible → acceptable → good → perfect

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-name-things-while-writing-code-ivan-karaman-0w6fc

Doing first steps as a "test automation engineer"?
This article is for you! ❤️

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/first-most-important-step-road-test-engineer-ivan-karaman-ekqlc

Dive into the analysis that proves that paying for "test automation" education is worth the money you invest into it!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/calculate-paying-test-automation-lessons-any-other-worth-ivan-karaman-td2yc/

This is why I love Twitter!
Sometimes you can get SO MUCH wisdom from a random post by reading replies...

Take this one from DHH:
| "HEY today has some 300-odd system tests. We're going to cut that number way down. The sunk cost fallacy has kept us running this brittle, cumbersome suite for too long. Time to cut our losses, reduce system tests to a much smaller part of the equation."
https://x.com/dhh/status/1791552150038024424

🤔What can we extract from the buzz in replies and quotes around it?
(...some screenshots and more links in comments...)

Friday afternoons are for the good reads!
I want to share with you one of my "all time favourite" articles ❤️

It is about "lemons"! 🤣

It explains a SURPRISING DYNAMICS of the hiring market! If you are looking for a job, or looking to hire somebody, reading this might be useful!

http://danluu.com/hiring-lemons/

How do you normally autotest an API? You write some custom code or create a Postman collection... But is it a) "the only way" and b) "the best way" of doing it? What if I tell you that you could test your API in the "end-to-end style" and the "unit-test style" (at the same time)!? 🤓 And that you could have ULTIMATE CONTROL over the inner behaviour!

Intrigued?
This article will show you a theory and a practical example of "how to do it".
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/testing-api-without-e2e-tests-node-express-supertest-example-karaman-uchec

Friday is for good reads! 😎
Here's an article for you called "Being Glue"! https://noidea.dog/glue
This is another one of my favourites of all times! ❤️

TLDR In case you have never seen/read it: "To not harm your career do (mostly) the work that is expected from your role/title"

I am on fire this week in terms of writing productivity! So much that I Just published a new article 🔥
It is a practical step-by-step guide on how to make improvements to your test code!

I take a simple API test and do 10 rounds of improvements on it.

What is your opinion, is it better now, same, or worse? 🤔
Fight me in the comments (in a civilized manner, of course) if you don't like it!

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/practical-step-by-step-guide-improving-your-test-code-ivan-karaman-blhbc/