Automate or Die!
Alan Richardson
EvilTester.comSeleniumSimplified.comJavaForTesters.com @EvilTester
“Real World Automation
Survival”
Can you
survive?
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #23, 1961
Automate or Slave!“Let us remember that the automatic machine ... is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic conditions of slave labor. It is perfectly clear that this will produce an unemployment situation”
Norbert WeinerThe Human Use of Human Beings,
1950, pg 162
Don't compete with slave labour
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #33, 1963
"...automation makes it possible to do many things
that could not be done without it..."
John Diebold,
Beyond Automation,
1964, pg 191
Automating isn't easy
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #28, 1962
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Automating has always been a challenge
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Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #18, 1961
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“Automation has turned out to be a much more complex and difficult problem than was
originally thought.”
John Diebold, Beyond Automation,
1964, pg 51
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“What we need is more automation.”
1948
Ford Motor company VP,
Delmar S. Harder,
Coined “automation” in 1948
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John Diebold,
“Automation”, 1952
"...the author found automatization both awkward and - from the standpoint of his weak spelling - hazardous ... it was the ease of spelling that finally overcame the author's reticence to coin a new word"
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1957
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The word “Automation” is...
“barbarous”
http://www.norbertwiener.umd.edu/NW/NWphotos.html
Norbert Wiener
@EvilTester “Science”, May 6th, 1960 http://bit.ly/1iwga1m
@EvilTester “Science”, May 6th, 1960
'automatization', 'automata', 'strategy','machine', 'automatic', 'automated', 'programming'
http://bit.ly/1iwga1m
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Watch your language
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Automation is not a 'thing'
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'Automation' is Arguable
'Automation' is vague enough that we can argue about it
Testers need to program to do
automation
Testers can do automation without needing to program
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Abstractions
“... what we see, hear, feel, speak about or infer, is never it, but only our human abstraction about 'it'.”
The Role of Language in the Perceptual Process
Alfred Korzybski
1951http://bit.ly/1G06gL0
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Testers need to program to write code that will automate this
scenario
Control your
specific language
Testers can identify the paths through the system that we
will automate without needing to program
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Solutions not tools
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #18, 1961
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For 'tools' to be solutions, you have to know what
problem they solve
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Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #18, 1961
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Automating Applications isn't easy
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #18, 1961
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Automating is often a hunt for
workarounds
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #27, 1962
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How technical
do testers need to
become?Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #20, 1961
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How can we observe and manipulate the system at
deeper levels?
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Team skills are important
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #27, 1962
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BDD● BDD is not about testing● BDD is not about tools● BDD Tools are not testing tools
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“Whatever you might say something "is", it is not.”
Alfred Korzybsi,Science and Sanity,
1958, page 409
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BDD● BDD is not about testing● BDD is not about tools● BDD Tools are not testing tools
“If BDD tools aren't test tools why do we use them as part of our test approach?”
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I use Cucumber...● … as a tool for creating Domain Specific
Languages● … to easily document and implement data
driven scenarios
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A 'Test' tool is any tool you use when testing
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The solution to problems when automating is rarely
more automating
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #28, 1962
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Abstraction Layers“We all know that the only mental tool by means of which a very finite piece of reasoning can cover a myriad cases is called “abstraction””
The Humble Programmer
Edsger W. Dijkstra
ACM Turing Lecture 1972http://bit.ly/1MVghiP
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@Testpublic void canCreateAToDoWithNoAbstraction(){ driver.get(
"http://todomvc.com/architecture-examples/backbone/");
int originalNumberOfTodos = driver.findElements(By.cssSelector("ul#todo-list li"
)).size();
WebElement createTodo = driver.findElement(By.id("new-todo"));
createTodo.click(); createTodo.sendKeys("new task"); createTodo.sendKeys(Keys.ENTER);
assertThat(driver.findElement(By.id("filters")).isDisplayed(), is(true));
int newToDos = driver.findElements(By.cssSelector(
"ul#todo-list li")).size();
assertThat(newToDos, greaterThan(originalNumberOfTodos));
}
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Abstraction Layers“... the purpose of abstracting is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.”
The Humble Programmer
Edsger W. Dijkstra
ACM Turing Lecture 1972http://bit.ly/1MVghiP
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@Test public void canCreateAToDoWithAbstraction(){ TodoMVCUser user =
new TodoMVCUser(driver, new TodoMVCSite());
user.opensApplication().and(). createNewToDo("new task");
ApplicationPageFunctional page = new ApplicationPageFunctional(driver,
new TodoMVCSite());
assertThat( page.getCountOfTodoDoItems(), is(1));
assertThat( Page.isFooterVisible(), is(true));
}
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Refactor to Abstraction Layers
● Physical● Logical● Domain● Data● Event● Actor
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And how do you find time to test when you
are automating so much?
Challengers of the Unknown, DC Comics, #18, 1961
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Survival is a way of thinking...
“Automation requires us to view the production processes as an integrated
system... Automation is a way of thinking, a way of 'looking at...' as much as it is a way of
doing... It is an attitude... rather than a particular technology”
John Diebold, Applied Automation. A Practical Approach,
p. 3 1955
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“Automation requires us to view the production processes as an integrated
system... Automation is a way of thinking, a way of 'looking at...' as much as it is a way of
doing... It is an attitude... rather than a particular technology”
John Diebold, Applied Automation. A Practical Approach,
p. 3 1955
Systems
Abstraction
Survival is a way of thinking...
Requisite Variety
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“Automation requires us to view the production processes as an integrated
system... Automation is a way of thinking, a way of 'looking at...' as much as it is a way of
doing... It is an attitude... rather than a particular technology”
John Diebold, Applied Automation. A Practical Approach,
p. 3 1955
Requisite Variety
Systems
Abstractions
Survive