Issue #162 : Software Testing Notes
Beyond Test Automation Tools and Syntax: What Really Matters
Hello there! 👋
Welcome to the 162nd 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:
Avoiding Test Results Conflicts
JMeter’s Precise Throughput Timer V/S Constant Throughput Timer
Beyond Test Automation Tools and Syntax: What Really Matters
Most Used Methods with Appium
Advanced Visual Testing with Playwright
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📚 Testing
Beyond Test Automation Tools and Syntax: What Really Matters by Brijendra (Brij) Singh
Is mastering every new testing tool is essential for success? Brijendra (Brij) Singh shares that true expertise lies in problem-solving, strategic thinking, and foundational skills rather than tool-specific knowledge. The article encourages testers to focus on enduring principles over fleeting technologies, ensuring long-term career growth by building depth in core skills before expanding their toolkit.
Avoiding Test Results Conflicts by Venkat Ramakrishnan
To align quality and test professionals with project and program management, Venkat Ramakrishnan highlights three key pillars—communication, collaboration, and transparency to help quality professionals to foster trust and prevent misunderstandings in testing outcomes.
Fix Your Bugs Before Doing Anything Else by Dennis Martinez
Through personal experiences, Dennis highlights the real-world consequences of neglecting bug fixes and shares practical strategies—such as demonstrating financial losses, tracking changes, and dedicating time for bug resolution—to improve software development efficiency.
Rethinking Software Quality by Alessandra Moreira
Delivering quality software is a continuous journey, not just a testing checkpoint. Alessandra Moreira challenges the misconception that software testing alone ensures quality.
🔍 Software Testing
⚙️ Automation
How to detect and fix flaky tests in Pytest by Vincent Ge
Vincent Ge discusses how concurrency, test order dependencies, and reliance on external resources contribute to flaky tests and emphasizes the importance of test isolation, proper setup and teardown, and controlling the test environment to mitigate flakiness, particularly in end-to-end testing with Pytest.
Retrying Android Tests and Clearing the Database Between the Runs by Alexey Alter-Pesotskiy
Alexey Alter-Pesotskiy shares a strategy for retrying flaky Android tests instead of disabling them, using a custom annotations to control the number of retries per test.
Most Used Methods with Appium Part 2 by Pelin Başormancı
The article demonstrates how to use Appium methods to navigate through an application by interacting with UI elements using scrolling, clicking, swiping, and other gestures. Pelin Başormancı explores different scenarios, such as drawing with the drag-and-drop method, handling alerts with long-press, using copy-paste for text input, and switching device orientations with the rotate method.
Also read Part 1
Advanced Visual Testing with Playwright by Dipen Chavan
Visual testing plays an importance in catching unintended UI changes by comparing screenshots. Dipen Chavan walks through the setup process, writing basic and advanced tests, and configuring Playwright for stable visual comparisons, including handling dynamic content with masking, thresholds, and custom CSS.
Find Specs For The Given URL By The Test Effort by Gleb Bahmutov
How would you select which end-to-end (E2E) test specs to run first when changes are made to a project? Gleb Bahmutov introduces us to the cypress-visited-urls plugin, which helps prioritize specs based on how many Cypress commands interact with a specific URL.
Stop Running High-Risk E2E Tests in Every Browser by Lana Begunova
This article highlights the inefficiencies of running high-risk, end-to-end (E2E) tests across multiple browsers in cross-browser testing. Instead, Lana Begunova advocates for focusing on compatibility testing by refining the test strategy to isolate core browser-dependent functionality and limiting E2E tests to a primary browser.
cypress-runner-themes: Alternative Styles for the Cypress Test Runner by David Ingraham
If you are used to working with dark mode, David Ingraham shares the cypress-runner-themes package, which allows users to customize the Cypress Test Runner with different themes, including dark, light, and colorblind-friendly options.
🔍 Test Automation
💨 Performance
Monkey Testing Explained: How Random Actions Can Uncover Critical Bugs by Marta Rakowska
Monkey Testing is a software testing approach that involves generating random inputs and interactions to uncover unexpected bugs, crashes, and performance issues.
Marta Rakowska highlights different types of monkey testing, its advantages and limitations, and useful tools like MonkeyRunner, Appium, and UI/Application Exerciser Monkey to enhance its effectiveness.
Simple Load Testing for RESTful APIs with Locust by Irfan Mujagić
Irfan Mujagić provides a step-by-step guide to installing Locust, structuring test files, defining realistic user behavior through weighted tasks, and executing tests via its web interface.
1000 timers in Jmeter, which one should I use it ? Precise.. Constant.. by Alan Liew
Alan Liew clarifies the differences between JMeter’s Precise Throughput Timer and Constant Throughput Timer. Using a real-world API performance testing scenario, the article demonstrates how Precise Throughput Timer ensures a strict, evenly spaced request rate, while Constant Throughput Timer maintains an average throughput that fluctuates based on the number of active users.
🔍 Performance Testing
🌞 Accessibility
Usability testing with disabled users is a good investment by Nicolas Steenhout
Accessibility is about more than just meeting standards like WCAG—it’s about ensuring real usability for disabled users.
Nicolas Steenhout argues that focusing solely on conformance misses the point and by involving disabled users in testing, we can uncover barriers that compliance checks alone may not reveal.
🔍 Accessibility Testing
🔒 Security
Hacking OWASP Juice Shop — Beginner Experience by chengyit
This article by chengyit explores hands-on security testing using OWASP Juice Shop, highlighting common web vulnerabilities like DOM-based XSS, broken access control, and business logic flaws.
🔍 Security Testing
🛠️ Resources & Tools
Promptfoo — Test your prompts, agents, and RAGs. Red teaming, pentesting, and vulnerability scanning for LLMs.
Instancio — A Java library for automating data setup in unit tests.
Mimesis — Generate wide range of fake data in multiple languages.
📝 List of Software Testers
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🎁 Bonus Content
📌 OTHER INTERESTING STUFF
⭐ LAST WEEK'S MOST READ
Beyond the Script: Mastering Exploratory Testing Like a Pro by Sajith Dilshan
Performance Testing: Types, Tools, and Tutorial by Deepika Kale
😂 And Finally,
What is Error driven development 🤣
📨 Send Me Your Articles, Tutorials, Tools!
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Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!
Happy Testing!
Pritesh(@priteshusdadiya)