Issue #161 : Software Testing Notes
Mastering Exploratory Testing Like a Pro
Hello there! 👋
Welcome to the 161st edition of Software Testing Notes, a weekly newsletter featuring must-read content on Software Testing. I hope this week has been good for you so far.
This week, we will explore:
Mastering Exploratory Testing Like a Pro
TOP useful Cypress plugins in 2025
Paper review: Software Testing Research Challenges
Testing tokens in Playwright
API Testing with Kotlin and RestAssured
and more…
✨ Featured
500+ best hand-picked tools to supercharge your testing.
TestDevTools is a collection of 500+ hand-picked tools & resources for your every testing needs. Whether you're looking for a new Automation tool, framework alternatives, a new way to manage test data, a way to learn development or testing… We got you covered.
📚 Testing
Beyond the Script: Mastering Exploratory Testing Like a Pro by Sajith Dilshan
Exploratory testing is a creative, detective-like approach to software testing, where testers rely on curiosity and intuition rather than rigid test scripts.
Sajith Dilshan shares personal experiences, practical strategies like testing from different user perspectives and using mind maps, and encourages collaboration to make exploratory testing more structured, effective, and engaging.
Attributes for Grouping Defects by Maire Grant
Maire Grant raises questions about the balance between logging comprehensive defect details and optimizing the time spent on reporting. The blog post explores the importance of defect logging and how categorizing defects using various attributes can reveal patterns, improve system insights, and enhance defect management efficiency.
Know Your Limits by Kristin Jackvony
Setting boundaries before you start testing can help testers tremendously. In this article, Kristin Jackvony explores three key types of limits: size, type and performance limits that can help software testers to prevent failures, enhance user experience, and safeguard applications from potential threats.
Paper review: Software Testing Research Challenges: An Industrial Perspective by Oleksandr Romanov
The research paper "Software Testing Research Challenges: An Industrial Perspective", which explores the current state of software testing and key open research questions.
Oleksandr Romanov reviews the research paper and shares how AI-driven solutions are reshaping testing, but also underscores the many unresolved challenges that provide opportunities for further research and practical advancements.
Building up a startup test engineering team by Heemeng Foo
Heemeng Foo discusses the challenges of assembling a startup QA team, including finding test engineers with both the right skills and long-term growth potential, and suggests an alternative approach.
🔍 Software Testing
⚙️ Automation
Maestro Workbench: A Community Contribution by Dan Caseley
Maestro Workbench — is a VS Code extension to streamline writing and managing Maestro test flows.
Dan Caseley highlights key features of Maestro Workbench such as test structure visualization, integration with the VS Code Testing tab for running tests, schema validation to catch errors early, and helpful hover-based command assistance.
Testing tokens in Playwright by Team Merlin
The article explains how to set up an API request context with necessary headers and tokens, then walks through various test scenarios for handling missing, incorrect, and expired tokens.
Also read previous post about API testing using Playwright (JS).
🔝TOP 5 useful Cypress plugins in 2025! by Vadym Nastoiashchyi
Vadym Nastoiashchyi shares five useful plugins for tasks like API testing, performance measurement, test filtering, enhanced reporting, and recursive test execution, explaining their benefits and use cases.
A Practical Look at the Object Pool Pattern for Playwright Tests by Yevhenii O.
Yevhenii O. explains the Object Pool Pattern as a way to efficiently manage limited resources, resolving session conflicts, avoiding stale test data, and ensuring optimal performance in parallel testing, especially with Playwright.
What to Test (and What Not to Test) in SwiftUI by Jon Reid
Jon Reid explores the nuances of unit testing in UI code arguing that while UI logic should be tested, by focusing on meaningful assertions and avoiding rigid UI implementation tests, we can maintain adaptable, test-driven SwiftUI applications without compromising design flexibility.
How Kotlin Makes API Test Automation with RestAssured Easier by Márcio Corrêa
Márcio Corrêa showcases how to simplify API testing with Kotlin and RestAssured along with Kotlin’s key features such as concise syntax, extension functions, null safety, data classes, coroutines, and DSLs.
🔍 Test Automation
💨 Performance
Performance Testing: Types, Tools, and Tutorial by Deepika Kale
Deepika Kale provides an in-depth exploration of various types of performance testing, explaining when and how to apply each method effectively. Through real-world examples, the article highlights how performance testing ensures applications remain stable, responsive, and efficient under varying loads.
Performance of Performance Testing: JMeter Script Optimization with VisualVM by Yusuf Aşık
Yusuf Aşık provides actionable tips to optimize JMeter scripts to ensure realistic and scalable load testing while avoiding false bottlenecks using VisualVM to detect resource bottlenecks.
🔍 Performance Testing
🔒 Security
Are You a Security Tester or Penetration Tester? by Jayaraman M
What distinguishes security testers from penetration testers? Jayaraman M clarifies the difference between Web Application Security Testing (WAST) and Web Application Penetration Testing (WAPT), noting that penetration testing is a specialized subset of security testing that involves hands-on exploitation and risk analysis.
The Prefix, The Suffix, and the SQL Injection That Almost Got Away by Clark Voss
Persistence, attention to detail, and manual verification are essential in security testing. This article recounts the Clark Voss's experience discovering an SQL Injection vulnerability while testing a Synack target.
🔍 Security Testing
🛠️ Resources & Tools
TypeScript Console — A Chrome extension that lets you run and debug TypeScript code in Chrome's DevTools with support for the latest TypeScript features and ability to import npm packages.
Comment Issues — A neat little VS Code extension that allows you to automatically link issue numbers in your code comments to your repository issues.
Safetest — A powerful UI testing library that combines Playwright, Jest/Vitest, and React for a powerful end-to-end testing solution for applications and component testing.
📝 List of Software Testers
Do you create content around Software Testing ? Submit yours blog details here and I will add it to the list.
🎁 Bonus Content
📌 OTHER INTERESTING STUFF
⭐ LAST WEEK'S MOST READ
Here's How I Use AI as a Quality Assurance Professional by Anna Kovalova
Parallel Testing with Playwright: How to Avoid Collisions and Failures (en) by Juan Promanzio
😂 And Finally,
When you code works but you don't know how
📨 Send Me Your Articles, Tutorials, Tools!
Wrote something? Send links via Direct Message on Twitter @thetestingkit (details here). If you have any suggestions for improvement or corrections, feel free to reply to this email.
Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!
Happy Testing!
Pritesh(@priteshusdadiya)
Exploratory testing can be tricky when you don’t have a clear script to follow. You might find that using Coachers dot org’s collaborative approach helps bring more structure and creativity to your sessions. It made my testing feel more focused and insightful.