TestWorks Conf Real world automation survival - Alan Richardson

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


"...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


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Automating has always been a challenge

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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


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For 'tools' to be solutions, you have to know what

problem they solve

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Automating Applications isn't easy


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Automating is often a hunt for

workarounds


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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


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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


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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?


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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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p. 3 1955

Systems

Abstraction

Survival is a way of thinking...

Requisite Variety

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p. 3 1955

Requisite Variety

Systems

Abstractions

Survive

TestWorks Conf Real world automation survival - Alan Richardson

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