QA as a solo developer #ask-ih
Hey guys! I am Gideon, originally from Amsterdam and now hacking away from Tel Aviv. I have been following the community for a while and figured my time has come to introduce myself and ask some questions!
I am the developer of a live streaming platform operating for the Dutch market.
We are using OpenTok (webrtc) and I am really liking it. How do you guys go about testing your applications and being your own QA team when you are the only developer? I find it very tedious and keep on delaying it. While its obviously super important, especially with the kind of live shows we are doing when most of the traffic is during a 15 minute time window. Right now I am discovering most bugs during high load (the live shows) which is obviously too late. Does anyone have any tips?
Why don't you try using record-replay tools to automate some of your testing?
We are building a test automation platform at Trudl.io and have a forever free version, but will be launching our product later this year.
Try using Selenium IDE till then and see if it works? If you want to do load testing, you might want to check out Blazemeter, but that's paid.
This looks very sleek! Are you planning to support webrtc? It would be super cool if could simulate clients connecting to the session. Good luck with the development! Will keep on an eye on it.
Not supporting WebRTC and load testing in the initial phases, at least. But you can do end-to-end functional UI testing using Trudl. Will let you know when we launch our product, Gideon.
What is the nature of these bugs? Are they performance related or logic related?
I have had a few which were performance related which makes it even harder to debug. Especially the webrtc part where a regular automated testing tool doesn’t suffice because it wouldn’t actually connect to the webrtc session.
Also are there of course logic related bugs :D But those I am usually faster with solving even though I have been a few times too late as well where the users/ I discover them during a live show.
Do you think you would budget to pay someone for it?
I ask because my business is a community for software testing. I've debated with the idea for a long time to create some kind of service to help companies test their products. There are crowdsourced type companies out there, but it actually gets really expensive and they don't really serve smaller businesses well. There is no one really helping smaller people test in a positive way.
I think good/quick/adhoc exploratory testing can be really valuable to many small products out there.
Thanks for your reply! I think it would be definitely something worth investing in and would be happy to pay for such service. I just think it would depend on the prices (like all stuff we want to outsource). If it would be too expensive I would do it myself. But I would happy pay a monthly fee for this. Let me know if you plan on building such service!
Checkout IndieQa.co . I have tried the service in past and the reports were good.
I invested a lot into automated testing -- i write a lot of TDD (no integration testing, heavy unit testing guy), do a lot of automated code analysis, some fuzzing for public API's and monkey runner (on early stages of app development).
Next step would be mutation testing, I guess :-D
But I just want to say, going bonkers with automation testing (as I did) could never replace real human professionally trained to do QA. Really good QA costs a fraction of developer salary.
And to be frank, they leave much more creative space for a developer -- by taking over a lot of his responsibilities. Testing, in particular, is not that effective if done by developer. I started my IT carrier in QA, yeat I completely fail to find serious flaws in my own code (it's not that hard to fix shit if it breaks, but finding logic flaws is impossible with automation).
3 months ago hired a QA person to do testing for my SaaS app. And I'm amazed how much flaws she uncovered and they seem so obvious once they report it.
Seriously, if you have any cashflaw and your serious about quality -- hire a QA (even just for a project basis). It will pay for itself. If you need a reference for a QA with good value for money -- I can send contact of a girl I worked with. She is super and actually lives in Netherlands too!
You have totally convinced me!! Could you send me the details of the QA developer?
What's your email? I'll send you her contacts.
info@debater.tv, thanks again!
Hi,
I just read this.. Can you message me on my twitter handle your exact requirements, because we may have something to your benefit? My twitter handle is @nerdycap007
We provide an API Testing service/product that may be useful to you.