Testing - Seriously, Is there another way?
Testing our new platform and thinking "there has to be an easier way"... I'm amazed someone hasn't built an easy to use, intelligent system to basically test the hell out of new software!? Love to hear your thoughts & suggestions!
The issue is "what are you testing for?" Telling a tool to "test the hell out of new software" isn't comprehensive. What kind of things should it look for? What errors are okay? What should it do even? There are lots of testing automation tools, but you need to piece them together to test the criteria you want.
Thank's Shalvah... It was more of an exhaustive sigh from me!
A human tester can smoke test a system without prior knowledge of the domain. Sure, intelligent testing would require you to know how about business logic, but smoke testing doesn't.
Imagine someone would say to you "please click around in this system and tell me if you encounter bugs or just something that feels off". You would be able to do that and know what things are potential errors even without ever seeing the system beforehand.
If you submit a form and nothing happens, if you submit a form and cannot see this record in a list or records, if you click something and an error message appear, if a loading screen is stuck for too long etc. These things are not specific to your app, so an AI can be trained to understand them. I am not saying it's easy, but it's definitely doable.
Thanks, Mlapushkin - I'm just amazed that a 'Testing tool' hasn't been launched that does it all!
I suspect that any system able to truly intelligently "test the hell out of new software" could probably write that software, too!
I agree...
There's lots of testing tools out there, but testing is complicated, and under generally appreciated. So much of testing just can't be automated.
I don't consider myself a testing expert anymore, but I did have it as my day job for a while and I also built a community around it.
Thanks, Rosie- testing is such a bloody pain!
It might be convenient to have a web interface for authoring end-2-end tests — no need to worry about libraries and tools, yet let the AI-based cloud test runner execute them intelligently for you saving costs. Currently working on this idea: https://endtest.dev
What tech stack is your project based on? Assume there's a tool that can detect potential execution paths in your program and generate test cases for them? With the non-negotiable contract that you only have to plug in your expected outcomes. Will that be good enough?
Thanks, Nmeri17, I'm told that this needs the 'hands on' approach! Long and arduous...
Sucks to be their team member. Or maybe, it'll take seeing such tool in action to convince them. What is your tech stack?
I think a lot of companies would pay for a tool that can intelligently smoketest your system through the UI given only a set of login credentials.
Sadly, such tool does not exist yet. Probably because the AI that powers it would need to be quite sophisticated. Not to mention that all ML PhD are already busy working on autonomous cars 😄.
We are actually trying to do that. We created a visual tool for smoke and end-2-end testing. We have not launched yet, but you are welcome to try 😉 testup.io
Currently, you have to record the login process - which is very fast. More intelligence is scheduled for later...
Thanks, Darou - I've passed your details to our Dev team. Appreciate your feedback
Looks cool! I might give it a try. 😉
But my point was about an intelligent system that would know how to: find the things that you are selecting in the demo, click them in correct order and be able to understand whether the result is expected or not. All without a single instruction from the human.
Imagine someone would say to you "please click around in this app and tell me if you encounter bugs, visible errors or just something that feels off". I want that, but without a human.
Thank's Mihhail. I'm amazed that no one has built it yet!