I had such a wonderful time at Agile Testing Days USA, a European-based software testing conference that came to the United States for the first time this June, held up north of Boston, up in Danvers, Massachusetts.
Ever since I became a Meetup Organizer of a local Boston area software testing group, I have been having the most fun running many a social media campaign on LinkedIn and Twitter, reaching out to the software testing community to recruit speakers, hosts, sponsors, and members.
With Agile Testing Days, Tuesday June 26th - Wednesday June 27th, 2018, I managed to meet many of my favorite text-based life forms face-to-face!
With Integrated Development Environments (IDE), I am quick to adopt whatever the rest of the developers on the team use. For Java development, I like IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition. For JavaScript, Atom.io. And for writing the Capybara + Ruby framework, I have also been using Atom. The problem is that the BDD framework we are using at work -- Gauge -- has plugins that help refactor Gauge tests written in Java, but hasn't had anything for refactoring Gauge tests written in Ruby... until now.
With this blog article, I will be investigating Visual Studio Code -- commonly known as VS Code -- and how it helps refactor tests.
Why am I currently using Ruby for my automation framework if the BDD Framework hasn't supported it? Both Chef.io -- what I use to spin up virtual environments -- and GitLab.com -- the code storage / continuous integration environment also uses Ruby.
Let's say we wanted to test something out on Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, on a MacBook: How would we be able to set it up locally, configuring the workstation? We set it up in Docker before. What other ways are there?
One way to do it is with a Chef.io tool to spin up a test environment, Test-Kitchen, and its Ruby gem. And, yes, this cooking metaphor is extended all throughout the Chef toolset with its cookbooks and recipes for environment configurations.
Test-Kitchen on GitHub as a primary source: builds a Vagrantfile, allowing you to create or destroy the instances of your virtual machines
Vagrant: "a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past".
Oracle's VirtualBox: "VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. What does that mean? For one thing, it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating systems. Secondly, it extends the capabilities of your existing computer so that it can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual machines) at the same time."
The TestingGuild.com released the first two minutes of my talk "How [Software Testers] Can Work With Developers" as a promo for their online conference!
Each TestingGuild.com speaker submits a pre-recorded 30 minute talk, then gives a live 30 minute session. Joe Colantonio, the man behind the TestTalks.com podcast organized this online conference and the AutomationGuild.com one that I spoke at back in January.
What I love is that Joe express exactly the insecurity we all sometimes feel dealing with the fast paced software industry. During that talk, Joe admitted that because he was at the same workplace for a bit over a decade, he was feeling out-of-touch with how fast the software testing field was growing. Joe started a testing podcast and started interviewing industry leaders as a way for him to keep up with the times.
Me, I was tickled when I heard this. That's why I started this blog over three years ago. To keep track of my progress as I tried to keep up with the software testing industry.
Once, I was even supposed to be a guest on his show! Sometime's after I published my first Techbeacon article about switching from manual testing to automation development, we set things up. I had massive stage fright and cancelled the thing after the first five minutes... Which is why I am surprised he tapped me as a guest last November to be a guest speaker on the AutomationGuild.
