Skip to main content

Sorting the tools

Thank you Pexels!
Recently on Twitter, there was a question posted on what your favorite tools were. Not only was I delighted with the amount of answers (and the information I gained on what was suggested), but the amount of thought that people took before answering. I suspect they were looking specifically for testing tools, but my answer applies to nearly all areas of my life.

Choosing tools - be they something that you write, a regular expression, a locator, or a commercial product - is so very dependent on what you need it to do that a general recommendation is likely useless to those in other areas. Even in the world of databases - which seem to have been around forever, and all the options are fairly well know - there are still large disagreements on relational versus document databases, and how to best utilize them to get the information needed.

And selecting tools of nearly any type for a brand-new project is an exercise in frustration.

Thankfully, there are few totally new ideas out there - you can look at the current versions of the competition, and gain some idea of what you will be able to use the tooling for. And a look at the potential near future, from many sources (including those that you may not agree with) will help add to the list of things to consider. Using the database example above: is the database going to need to store information from a VR or AR version of your product? If so - what might be added, or taken away, to allow access to both old and new data for each of these versions?

As my selected image hints, the proper tool may not work for all types of problems. Yes, your selected tool might be excellent, but there is always the possibility that your project has outgrown it, or that a different tool is a good choice, now. Tools have grown and changed - and have competition that didn't exist before. So time needs to be invested in looking to see if the current toolbox needs an upgrade.

This adds not only time to look at options but the potential time of changing things in your system, which may not be a popular idea. Going back to change things that are working perfectly well at this moment is never an activity that brings delight - even if you know that making these changes is a good thing. And the possibility for adding errors is increased, because it isn't always something that brings new information, or new value. And then checking those changes - it seems an endless, slightly thankless task while you are in it.

My answer to the favorite tools was  "A notebook, and time". If you can plan a bit of time every week, and make notes from the various sources that you use, and are trusted, you can have a head start. When the time comes to consider a new option, you should have information on what is out there, and what issues each thing creates, or solves. And that will allow you to add the best possible choice to the toolbox, going forward.

Popular posts from this blog

Where Is It? Part 1 - Inputs

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
Read more

Getting to Explore: WSL2!

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
Read more

30 Days of Postman - for Testers!

  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
Read more