{"id":652,"date":"2013-06-26T22:03:17","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T05:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=652"},"modified":"2013-06-26T22:03:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T05:03:17","slug":"last-word-on-the-a-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/last-word-on-the-a-word\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Word on the A Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a busy month. (I blame <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xbox.com\/en-US\/xboxone\/meet-xbox-one\">Xbox One<\/a> for monopolizing my time), and I\u2019m way overdue for what I meant to be a \u201cday-after\u201d follow up for my <a href=\"http:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/?p=649\">last post<\/a>. If you didn\u2019t read it (or if it\u2019s been so long you\u2019ve forgotten), here\u2019s the summary and where we left off:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cAutomation\u201d is an overloaded and abused word that often implies that test code only exists to automate human tasks \u2013 that\u2019s stupid<\/li>\n<li>If you are a tester who codes, you write code. Period. <i>Some<\/i> of your code may automate tasks. Most will not (or shouldn\u2019t)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some have asked if I\u2019m against all automation. My tautological answer is that I\u2019m against <em>bad automation. <\/em>My better answer is, no \u2013 I\u2019m not against automating tasks for <em>some<\/em> testing. Automation is overused and overvalued in software \u2013 while the coding of diagnostic and analysis tools is extremely <em>under<\/em>valued. In many cases (<u>quick<\/u> check of basics, <u>some<\/u> unit tests, monkey testing, etc.), automating a set of user tasks is beneficial and provides a lot of bang for the buck, but focusing entirely on automation of user tasks is a waste of any programmers time.<\/p>\n<p>I wrote a chapter in a test automation book a few years ago, but on principle, I didn\u2019t write about automation. I wrote about a simulation framework that made it easier to write <em>some targeted automation<\/em>. To me, writing something like this is a great use of a tester\u2019s time \u2013 often much better than to write a suite of automated scripts.<\/p>\n<p>The point is, if your testing strategy is <em>entirely <\/em>to automate a suite of user tasks, you are doing way more to keep \u201cautomators\u201d busy than you are actually providing valuable testing. We can debate the goal of the testing activity, but one thing it is <strong>not, <\/strong>is the activity of running through a bunch of user tasks over and over. In fact, one of the touted benefits of automation is repeatability \u2013 but no user executes the same tasks over and over the exact same way, so writing a bunch of automated tasks to do the the same is often silly.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m done writing about automation for now. I may continue to write about code or debugging or testing. My advice for testers is to worry less about \u201cautomation\u201d. Ignore it if you can \u2013 but at the very least realize how overloaded\u2026and overblown the word is is the software community and take a holistic approach to software testing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a busy month. (I blame Xbox One for monopolizing my time), and I\u2019m way overdue for what I meant to be a \u201cday-after\u201d follow up for my last post. If you didn\u2019t read it (or if it\u2019s been so long you\u2019ve forgotten), here\u2019s the summary and where we left off: \u201cAutomation\u201d is an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angryweasel.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}