"Automated Testing Basics" Article

Well, I know I said I'd have this done on Wednesday, but I ended up writing a bit more then I expected. Writing is always strange for me. I continually underestimate the amount of time it will take. A part of me is just like “I know what I want to say and have the structure of it planned out in my head, it should be super fast to write that down.”

This was a fair amount of writing though. It got big enough that I made it an article instead of a regular post and the handy word count feature in Word tells me its 2500 words long. So not too bad, but longer then a casual read.

In Joel on Software style here's an excerpt:

That's really what automated testing is about. I try to get computers to do my job for me. One of the ways I describe my goal as a tester is to put myself out of a job - meaning that I automate my entire job. This is, of course, unachievable so I don't worry about actually putting myself out of a job. But it's a good vision. My short term goal is always to automate the parts of my job I find most annoying with the selfish goal of not having to do annoying stuff any more.

So read on. It's linked as an article on the left pane, or you can just go here.

Chris