It’s hard for me to remember what it was like to start using Watir in the mid-2000’s, but Jon Franchi reminded me a little about it when we spoke about his experiences.
https://soundcloud.com/the-watir-podcast/episode60-jon-franchi
The Watir Podcast is publishing podcasts again. In this week’s episode, Neil Manvar from SauceLabs tells us about the advantages of use SauceLabs, how to get started, and what mistakes can lead to trouble.
Please listen and give feedback on this podcast on SoundCloud (https://soundcloud.com/the-watir-podcast/episode-59-saucelabs), as well as what you would like to hear about on future Watir Podcasts.
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I am not a programmer. Well, I am but I never considered myself to be good at it. Most of the places that I worked, I was the only person creating test frameworks. I never received benefit from getting a code review of anything I wrote. I did not pair with anybody on writing any scripts, methods, or page objects. In fact, the first time I showed professionals in test automation my code, they looked embarrassed for me. When they got over the shock, they started giving suggestions that were obvious to them, but I had never learned. Hey, my code worked! Isn’t that what counted?
Well, since then I got over the big balls of mud that I was creating. I started paying more attention to the grace and simplicity of the code I saw from others. And I learned… some.
Maybe i can use more than one file for my code? Oh, I can let errors throw back to the calling function? Very interesting, I can create tests for my test tools. I can self-document these? I was learning, but I wanted more.
Within the past couple years, I have discovered a few things to help me with my programming. First, I found Rubocop (thanks Željko) which helped me to start up the style of my code. I started using standard indention, line lengths, variable names, limit the size of methods, and complexity.
Then I stumbled upon Travis-CI. I can’t remember for sure, but I think that I saw a badge on somebody’s github page. “Hey, I can use that too!” So I added that. I learned that I could run my test suite on several versions of ruby, even on JRuby. I felt that was important because I had written a tool that still used my rest client. I could add my own badge that lets everybody know my library is still good. I want people to feel confident that my builds are good so I added the badge.
Then I saw coveralls where I learned that I my tests were missing parts of my code. It was only 10%. But it was coverable, so why not cover it? I improved my coverage to 100%. It did not drop down until… I tried to add support for JRuby9. That’s when I discovered that JRuby9 does not support coveralls yet when my coverage when down. I decided it was too early to support JRuby9. I wanted people to know that the library is tested so I added the badge.
Then I hit the motherload. I was looking into a library that supported money formatting and discovered RubyMoney. Wow, they had badges for everything.
Quintuple Wow! Most of these tools are free for open-source projects, which is the only status that I would consider. Anybody can add them.
Adding the badges was fun, at least in the beginning. I discovered Reek this week, which is another linter for ruby. It played well with Rubocop so I added it to my project. There were different types of problems that I had to address. To support those changes, I expanded my automated tests too. When I checked in the branch, I could see how it was doing in CI. When I got negative feedback, I reworked the code. When the feedback was good, I knew I could merge the code to the master.
When I check in code changes, whether for refactoring, adding test cases, or increasing the versions of Ruby I support, I learn quickly whether my code was working still. When I learned reek didn’t support JRuby-1.7 because it’s base version of Ruby is 1.9, then I found a way to control that in both the Gemfile and Rakefile. When I tried to support JRuby9, I learned it’s not baked enough for me.
As my friend once stated, “you can never over-communicate.” Those tools are communicating to me, while the Badges are communication to anybody using my libraries.
I also had to fool around with various configuration files to make sure the linters work working locally and cloudly (yes, I just made that up). Work is cost.
It seems like Gemnasium is going to start charging in 20 days to show my status. Money is cost.
Second thing I learned, while most of the work is in setting them up, maybe I can use some moderation in how many I use. So as long as it helps me, and as long as it’s free, I’ll use them. When I have to pay or they become more work than help, I will drop them.
Software Quality Assurance and Test 