Distorted Rovings

  https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-and-brown-cat-lying-beside-a-laptop-and-toys-5468268/ Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels   Working with developer- focused tools can be a challenge for some testers: we may know what the words mean, but haven't used those skills recently enough to make the tasks simple. Or we may not have ever used them, other than at a quick glance to make sure that what we are getting matches what it should be sending. And some give results that require us to go find another team member to help interpret the results. Being a more-independent tester has always been one of my goals - being able to use the tools that are common in the team, and be able to do at least basic tasks that support my tests with them. Our team used Postman for many of the API tasks that we had, so exploring this tool was a natural fit. There are alternatives it there, both graphical and command line, so feel free to explore! The items that you can do, and tools that help

https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-white-laptop-2740956/ Photo by Prateek Katyal from Pexels   Working on a graphical interface system is a delight, but every once in a while, I want to return to the command line style of computing - it's fast, and can have impressive results for a system. Even before Windows came up with a full subsystem, having a virtual machine and a Linux terminal for using some things wasn't uncommon.Thankfully, the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) now exists, and is mature enough to handle most things. And once I experienced this style of computing, and the knowledge that most things were as simple to do with command-line terminals, I want to go back to the command line often.  But being invited to see how much use replay.io would be for a tester helped make this choice easy. Not only did I get a chance to return to a method I enjoy, but a new tool that could help communication between team members. And, now that I think about it, with stakeholder

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels     I am job-searching, and running into some coding challenges. Most of them are simple - some seem to want one-line solutions that require two cups of coffee and a half-hour to figure out what they want. Others are far above where my skills lie, and these I give a try for, and learn. And then there are the ones that offer, seemingly randomly, a challenge - within my skills (or at least my research skills) - that could be used as part of a larger project that I want to work on. This was the case last week, when I tried for a position that was a bit above what I felt I could do comfortably. The challenge was to let someone enter items, and then give back their location. In a language I am just familiar enough to be a danger to myself in. Happily, and thinking forward about how I could use this as a part of a larger program that would  use something like this to interact with the user. And also, this is command line, and thinking of how to set this up to

Heads-down DevOps by Arlene Andrews (original publication: https://testingindevops.org/heads-down-devops/) I was recently looking at the world of DevOps: the sheer number of potential changes and practices that shift both the way the company works, and the way things are approached are not easy! There are a few well-known names with a huge following that seem to attend every major conference, and are a great source of knowledge. These folks are there, advocating for the changes that are needed, and are a grand source of ready information for businesses and practitioners that need information on how a specific technique might look in the future. Photo by  Riccardo Annandale  on  Unsplash And, thankfully, most of them are capable of sharing their energy and excitement — which gets the team and management to be willing to try something new. This is an important skill: any change cannot be done effectively by just a few people. The more you are able to show

Image by delo from Pixabay “The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.”  ― Confucius  I was asked to pair Blog with Lena Weiberg - much to my shock and delight. This was the perfect opportunity to hear another point of view on something, and share it with the wider community.  ~ Part of being a good tester, to me, is making sure I stay aware of the trends in development. Knowing  how the team is working can help get comments and questions to them at the proper times, and has  the information that can be acted on. In this quest, I attended a recent online conversation where the  topic was primarily on the size of 'steps' taken in software development: making sure each step takes  a reasonable amount of time, that it leaves the system in a state that isn't worse than it was before the  change, and that could - if needed - be deployed at this point.  The concept of “wobble”  (I'm not sure

cover_image: https://images.pexels.com/photos/408503/pexels-photo-408503.jpeg?auto=compress&cs=tinysrgb&dpr=2&h=650&w=940 Photo by slon_dot_pics from Pexels  Learning on your own is fun: you have the option to chase a concept until you are satisfied that you fully understand the concept, to the level you need it. But that is also the downside: as a tester, you have few public sites that offer a series of exercises to ensure that you can build that mental list of conditions that you need to ensure are covered in a testing situation. I am slightly envious of my developer friends: they have established problem sets that they can use to upgrade their skills, and assist in learning the tricks of their particular programming language. The sites are set up to allow both individual learning and competition as an individual, or as a group. This, for many people, is a great incentive to do these exer