TestComplete turned 20 today! Let’s celebrate!
Hello all, Twenty years ago, TestComplete was created to help software professionals ensure the quality of any application. And, thanks to your continued business, and this community’s innovative ideas, TestComplete continues to be one of the world’s most popular testing solutions, year after year. At SmartBear, we share your passion for the continuous delivery of high-quality software, and we thank you for helping TestComplete reach this milestone. Want to learn more about how TestComplete came to be and its growth over the years? Check out our latest episode of The SmartBear Founders Series? https://smartbear.wistia.com/medias/ut469hik9mFebruary 2021 | TestComplete Community News
Hello to the TestComplete Community! Welcome to the first edition of our monthly digest dedicated to TestComplete product and community news! We have a lot to share: new release info, interviews (with TestComplete team members and Community Leaders), the hottest community topics, top members, global SmartBear Community highlights, and more. Subscribe to the CommunityNews tag to stay in the know. Let us know what else you’d like to see in the monthly news with the comment section below! TestComplete Contributors Our TestComplete Community has answers to all sorts of product-related questions, thanks to you, our community members! If you have a problem with TestComplete, you can always find help and guidance here. In honor of those who make this page so helpful and contribute as much as they can, we’d like to shout-out the most active members of January 2021! The following TestComplete gurus received the biggest number of Kudos this month. (Kudos are a surefire way of knowing you’re doing things right and being helpful.) They are: AlexKaras , Marsha_R , BenoitB , tphillips , hkim5 Thank you for your efforts -- you’re doing a great job! Testcomplete 20-Year Anniversary Trivia! At the end of 2020, we celebrated 20 years of TestComplete excellence! Can you guess which of these are true, based on what we learned from SergeiLisitsyn, the founder of TestComplete? (The correct answers are hidden under a ‘spoiler’.) 1. What was the earliest ‘prototype’ of TestComplete? a. AQTime b. An AQTime Plugin c. TestExecute d. SoapUI [Correct answer] B: A plugin for AQTime. It was created for automated testing, and became the inspiration behind TestComplete. 2. The TestComplete Team values product quality above all. At one point they spent a lot of time simply improving the internal architecture of the tool. How much time did they spend on that? a. A month b. Two months c. Half a year d. A year [Correct answer] D : A year. The team spent a whole year to specifically improve the internal logic of TestComplete, to ensure it’s super reliable and easier to use. 3. What’s Sergei Lisitsyn’s personal record of working non-stop to fix things and overcome unexpected obstacles? a. 10 hours b. 24 hours c. 36 hours d. 2 days [Correct answer] C: 36 hours. Once Sergei spent 36 hours in a row working on TestComplete without any break or sleep! Wow! 4. What’s Sergei’s advice for all people starting a big project? a. Love what you do. b. Trust in your team and yourself. c. See your goal clearly. d. Pay less attention to the obstacles – you will get through them! [Correct answer] All of the above! How many did you get right? If you want more insights about TestComplete, watch an interview with its founder, Sergei Lisitsyn, about what went into your favorite testing tool! >> Watch the interview with Sergei Lisitsyn Product Updates TestComplete gets regular updates and releases – each of them brings you something additional to support your testing efforts. We’re happy to announce that a brand-new version of the tool was released last week – TestComplete 14.73! Some of the key improvements in v.14.73: Enhancements in cross-platform web tests: you can now create and run tests for web applications working in your local networks. Smarter SmartBear Test extension installation. Smarter object recognition in web applications. TestComplete can now identify text area and input box controls by their labels. Full support for the Chromium-based version of Edge. Support for recent versions of web browsers (Google Chrome 88, Mozilla Firefox 85). Support for Android 11 (API Level 30). Support for iOS 14.3. You can now create and run automated tests on this version. Testing iOS applications created with the latest Xcode release – version 12.3. Read about more improvements here: What's New in TestComplete 14.73. If you have a maintenance subscription, go here to update to TestComplete 14.73. If you’re interested in TestComplete but don’t have it, request a free 30-day trial. Most Discussed Topics In this past month, we saw a lot of fruitful conversations start up in the TestComplete Community. We love a good discussion! Check out these most popular topics in the last month and feel free to participate. Perhaps you have something to add to the conversation: TestComplete + Chromium based Edge browser support Converting an old project to CSS/XPATH Capturing the Command Line of a Process running in the Task Manager TestComplete license - Desktop module Measure the time it takes for a button to become enabled Wintertainment Feedback The year ended on a positive note in the SmartBear Community – we set up our awesome Wintertainment 2020 event that you liked so much. Each day we posted an article on testing trends to take with you to 2021 and gave valuable advice about working with SmartBear tools. TestComplete got its fair share of articles during Wintertainment. If you didn’t catch them the first time, you can check them out here: Increasing Test Coverage and Scalability With the Device Cloud Improving Testing Quality With Better Test Management If you want a look at all the articles, look under the Wintertainment20 label. We asked the participants to record video feedback about this event – let’s see what they have to say😊 >> Watch the Wintertainment feedback video Thanks to everyone who sent the videos, it is always nice to see you! We’re glad you liked Wintertainment 2020 and will work even harder to bring more great events in 2021. That’s all we’ve got for today. You’re welcome to share your thoughts and suggestions, ask questions, or just say ‘hi’ to fellow TestComplete Community members in the comments below. Thank you, and let’s have a great February! /SmartBear Community TeamJuly 2021 | ReadyAPI Community News
Hello Community! Welcome to the July TestComplete News. July is a great month – it’s time to sum up the quarter results and think about great stuff to do in the second part of the year! In this monthly digest, we’re happy to announce new quarterly community leaders, introduce the ReadyAPI Marketing team, share new product features, and much more. Let’s start. Q2 2021 COMMUNITY LEADERS As usual, each quarter begins with choosing new community leaders – members who contributed the most to the community within the quarter by giving replies and getting kudos. Please meet the new Q2 2021 Community Leaders: Leaders in the ReadyAPI and SoapUI OS communities: nmrao, richie, HimanshuTayal Leaders in the TestComplete community: @Marsha_R, @AlexKaras First-time leader in the Zephyr Scale community: @MisterB Congratulations, gang! You ROCK! In addition to respect of the entire SmartBear Community, we’re happy to reward you with a $50 gift card. Want to be a leader next quarter? Read the 3 Simple Steps to Become a ReadyAPI Community Leader to learn how to earn this community status. INSIDE READYAPI - Marketing Team Each month, we introduce ReadyAPI team members to our lovely customers so you can learn much more about us and the thought process behind the tool. This month, we’re talking with Phil Voulgaris, the ReadyAPI Marketing Lead. Watch the new interview to learn more about Phil and how the team works. If you have any questions to Phil, please post them in comments. >> Watch the interview with Phil Voulgaris Find more Inside ReadyAPI interviews, look under the ReadyAPITeam tag. PRODUCT UPDATEs Get the new ReadyAPI version – 3.9 – to access these new great features: REST support in the API Connection test step Smart Assertion And others Read the What's New In ReadyAPI article to learn about these and other upgrades. Download it now: If you’re a licensed user, get the latest version at the ReadyAPI Downloads Center. (And if you’re interested in giving ReadyAPI a shot, request a free 14-day trial). SMARTBEAR ACADEMY We recently made some major upgrades to the SmartBear Academy – this is a great, free learning resource where you can learn the products and improve your knowledge. Enroll in any courses you like, learn something new, and return to the SmartBear Community to share your new knowledge! You can even earn some more Kudos! Enroll in the ReadyAPI courses in the SmartBear Academy MOST DISCUSSED TOPICS Last month, there were so many great discussions. Here are only a few of them – but if anything piques your curiosity, please add your comments: ${projectDir} doesn't resolve correctly How to connect jdbc to an Excel file to fetch data and compare it with XPath match in ReadyAPI Groovy script to run a Teststep doesn't fail when the test Step fails How to get request body using a groovy script in ReadyAPI Newbie Question: Naming standards in ReadyAPI How to enable/disable multiple assertions in a test Suite via groovy script SQL Datasource Prepared Properties using a Property that is a comma separated list That’s all for a month! Got a question? Have a comment? Please feel free to let us know! /SmartBear Community TeamFebruary 2021 | ReadyAPI Community News
Hello ReadyAPI Community, Welcome to our first ReadyAPI Community News! In this newsletter, we’ll cover the community news you’ll find most interesting, highlight active contributors in our community, fill you in on the latest updates, and much more. Get in on the ground floor and subscribe now to the CommunityNews tag to stay in the know. And if you have any comments/suggestions about the news, let us know here or contact me personally. Now on to the February ReadyAPI Community News: Video Interview Last month we announced Community Leaders and Heroes, and it’s time to learn more about them. Please meet PrathapR ! Thanks to his enormous activity last quarter, Prathap was rewarded with the prestigious status of Community Leader! We conducted a short video interview with him that covered where he’s from, how he uses ReadyAPI to resolve tricky API testing challenges, why he moved from SoapUI to ReadyAPI – even how much he accomplished in a day when joined the SmartBear Community! >> Watch the interview with a Community Leader - PrathapR ReadyAPI Top Contributors Many of you were extremely active last quarter. You asked questions, replied to topics, gave kudos, posted solutions – all of which help the Community become better and better. Please join me in congratulating the following community members for their contributions: richie, ChrisAdams, HimanshuTayal, aaronpliu, SiKing, rajs2020, bklabel1, AsadGilani PRODUCT UPDATES Last month, we released a minor update, ReadyAPI v. 3.5.2, with changes that include: More stability for macOS Some bug fixes Read the What's New in ReadyAPI 3.5.2 to learn about these and other improvements. Download it now: If you’re a licensed user, get the latest version at the ReadyAPI Downloads Center. (And if you’re interested in giving ReadyAPI a shot, request a free 14-day trial). MOST DISCUSSED TOPICS Last month was very active with conversations. Here are some of the more interesting discussions of the past month that helped community members solve their issues: Stop Data Source Loop Adding a default argument to requests Excel data sources - using a relative path name for files Request should pick the data from a file and response should be generated in another file javax.net.ssl.SSLException: Connection reset error We still have a few questions awaiting solutions – feel free to post your thoughts: ReadyAPI Functional Testing Automate Problem ReadyAPI - How to export test results in different formats? I am not able to get output of remote shell script from groovy script in soapui Wintertainment Video Feedback Last December, many of you joined in on our annual community event – Wintertainment. The theme was "New Year Testing Resolutions". Hopefully, you’ve tried using some of the new approaches we covered. Share with us any solutions you’ve already implemented! In the meantime, we received your event feedback and prepared a short video, featuring you! It sounds like you enjoyed participating in the event and learned a lot, which pleases us to no end. Thanks for all your warm words. >> Watch the Wintertainment video feedback That’s all we’ve got for today! Please share your thoughts and suggestions, ask questions, or just say "hi" to fellow ReadyAPI Community members by using the comments below. Thank you, let’s have a great February! /SmartBear Community TeamNew Community Feature - Reply by Email
Hi SmartBear Community! Our Team is constantly working to bringing you the best community experience, here's a great improvement we implemented recently - you can reply to the community posts straight from the email notification. For example, if you post a question and someone replies in the thread you've created, by default, you will receive an email from the Community notifying you of the answer you received. This email will contain the following options: If you click the 'Reply' link and type a message, it will be posted to the Community as soon as you hit 'Send'. You can give Kudos/accept replies as Solutions right from the email as well. Note: It's important to click the link shown in the screenshot above, in the body of the email. Just clicking the 'Reply' or 'Reply All' button in your email app won't post anything to the Community. I hope you will find this feature useful! Stay tuned for more great enhancements. Let us know if you like this feature in the comments below.March 2021 | ReadyAPI Community News
Hello Community, Welcome to the monthly community news. As usual, expect to get the most exciting and interesting news from the ReadyAPI Community. If you have any suggestions or questions about the news, please feel free to post comments here. Now on to the February ReadyAPI Community News: [VIDEO] MEET THE TEAM I’m sure you want to know more about ReadyAPI! I have great news 😀 Starting this month, we are launching a series of interviews with the ReadyAPI SmartBear Team – you will learn more about the people who make decisions around the product, how ReadyAPI is developed and tested, and much more! Today, meet the ReadyAPI Product Owner – Temil Sanchez. (You can find him in the community as TSanchez_1) Temil has been working at SmartBear for 8 years! He has great knowledge in the API world that he is ready to share with you. >> Watch the interview with Temil Sanchez Make sure to leave any questions for Temil in the post. ReadyAPI Top Contributors We’re already closing in on quarter-end, which is when we announce the new quarterly Community Leaders. All of you still have a chance to earn this elite status! All you need to do is to participate in the ReadyAPI Community by adding valuable posts that receive Kudos. That being said, let’s meet the top contributors of the previous month – team, you rock! Thanks a lot for your great contributions. richie, HimanshuTayal, ChrisAdams, Arunachalam_RM, PrathapR PRODUCT UPDATES In February, we released ReadyAPI 3.6. It includes various features, like: A new Endpoints & Environments dialog that extends the functionality of the previous Environments dialog An improved Assertions tab A new, improved way to manage APIs in a project Much more Read the What's New in ReadyAPI 3.6 article to learn about these and other improvements. Download it now: If you’re a licensed user, get the latest version at the ReadyAPI Downloads Center. (And if you’re interested in giving ReadyAPI a shot, request a free 14-day trial). Academy Certified The SmartBear Academy provides a set of courses to help you learn ReadyAPI. Different course levels will fit the needs of learners with different skills. Review the ReadyAPI courses and enroll in the ones you like Once you complete a course, you will receive a special community badge – Academy Certified. MOST DISCUSSED TOPICS Let’s review the most popular discussions. Have something to add? Just reply to the topics you like: How to compare multiple database values with api response in single shot without groovy scripting? How to set baseline performance Using partitial value in a request Extract nested JSON response values in DataSource for JSON - how to export to file / excel? ReadyAPI - Understanding the result returned by a groovy script? How to use method defined in separate groovy script in different test suite how to run sample rest projects present in smart bear website? OAuth token value in AuthManager update form test (groovy) That’s all we’ve got for today! Please share your thoughts and suggestions, ask questions, or just say "hi" to fellow ReadyAPI Community members by using the comments below. /SmartBear Community TeamAugust 2021 | TestComplete Community News
Hi TestComplete Community, Welcome to our monthly news digest for August – let’s start! INSIDE TESTCOMPLETE As promised, we’d like to introduce two more members of the TestComplete Team! This time around, we invited the very people who write the TestComplete documentation. We pride ourselves on how thorough and well-written the help articles are for this product, and we’re excited to introduce Julia Klimenkova, Senior Technical Writer, and Alina Blohova, Technical Writer. We spoke about the challenges the team faces when dealing with feature-packed TestComplete releases (especially now, when the tool is released monthly), touched upon their favorite help topics, and more. Watch the video and feel free to say ‘hi’ to Julia and Alina in the comments! WATCH THE INTERVIEW>> Find more Inside TestComplete interviews under the TestCompleteTeam label. SMARTBEAR ACADEMY For us, it’s important that each community member has access to all free educational resources for TestComplete. If you haven’t enrolled in the TestComplete learning courses in the SmartBear Academy yet, you can do it right now – here's the list of all free courses for TestComplete. You’re not just getting profound knowledge about the tool, but gaining authority points in the TestComplete Community as well! We assign an Academy Certified badge to all community members who get certificates after successfully completing courses. Let’s congratulate everyone who passed exams for TestComplete courses last month: Sulochana12, satishmatere, smithrob, jaredcscott, HarryJ, koram, PRajeswari, QAxians, Sandhiya, kentcamp, leon1208, RogerKittelson, Jacy, slecault, KristinaA, sambumca Congratulations! Make sure to share your certificates on LinkedIn and Twitter with a #SmartBear hashtag – let everyone know about your success! BIG SMARTBEAR COMMUNITY SITE UPDATE Take a look around at the new community page updates. We’ve implemented some changes that we hope will enhance your overall SmartBear Community experience! When you read conversations, ask questions, give Kudos, share your knowledge – we know it matters. Each activity is extremely important for the SmartBear Community, so we’ve done our best to make it better. Here are some improvements: - A new light main menu with quick navigation across product communities and quick access to the “Ask a Question” button - A new design of topic pages to help you concentrate on creating your topic - A decreased number of options in the topic and post menus, with only the most important ones left - Labels to replace the tag functionality. Please make sure you select the needed label when submitting a question – this is how we categorize topics Have a question? Let us know! TOP COMMUNITY CONTRIBUTORS Last month, we announced the quarterly TestComplete Community Leaders. These are the members who proved the most active and helpful on the forums. Any one of you can become a Community Leader in Q3: just participate in discussions, share solutions, and create useful technical content! Being a Community Leader isn’t just a fancy community rank – it has a lot of benefits. Learn more about it from this article: 3 Simple Steps to Become a TestComplete Community Leader. As for now, please join me in congratulating the following community members who showed the most activity last month: Marsha_R, A_Roskoshnyi, AlexKaras, hkim5, mattb, MarkSchofer, Lee_M Most discussed topics The TestComplete Community had some great tool- and industry-related discussions last month. Big thanks to all participants – you’re enriching the community with your knowledge and experience daily! Check out July’s biggest discussions: - Read entries in browser console - ListView - GetCell() method - Data generator question - Login object cannot be found anymore - Why Would A script Record Differently That’s all for the August TestComplete news digest! Leave your comments below to let us know about your personal highlights in the TestComplete Community. Have a wonderful August!March 2021 | TestComplete Community News
Hello TestComplete Community! We are glad you liked the first edition of TestComplete Community News, so here's the second issue! Our monthly digest covers community life, product updates, and more. Let's jump right into it! Community Leader Interview We’d like to introduce one of our 'freshmen' Community Leaders – Thomas Phillips. His community username is tphillips, and he’s been very active on the forums helping fellow TestComplete users. Check out our interview with him to learn more about his background, his TestComplete learning curve advice, and which features of the tool he uses the most. WATCH THE INTERVIEW >> top Contributors The TestComplete Community never sleeps! Community members are located all over the globe – no such things as time zones here. Thousands of people visit weekly to ask questions, share use cases, and help others find solutions. Let's see whose efforts stood out in February. When you think a post is good – give it Kudos! This is how other members will know it contains valuable information. Our top Kudoed members for February are: AlexKaras , Marsha_R , BenoitB , tphillips, hkim5 Who is willing to compete with them in March?😊 Product Updates Our update game is strong, and we are happy to announce TestComplete 14.74. The highlights of this release include: Mobile testing in device clouds (like BitBar) Orchestrating parallel test runs of your cross-platform web tests visually, straight from the Execution Plan editor of your project SAP support And much more! Read about more improvements here: What's New in TestComplete 14.74. If you have a maintenance subscription, go here to update to TestComplete 14.74. If you’re interested in TestComplete but don’t have it, request a free 30-day trial. New techcorner articles There’s an easy way to learn about new helpful materials. We keep all technical articles, use cases, script samples, and other stuff for TestComplete under the TechCorner tag. Subscribe to the tag to get notified about all new TechCorner posts! Last months, the two articles were added to TestComplete TechCorner: - TestComplete integration with Gitlab (or in theory any CICD) by hkim5 - Advanced search object for complex model by BenoitB Thank you for adding more great content to this Community! Most Discussed Topics A lot of quality technical talk happened in the forums this month. The TestComplete Community is a great place to talk to peers about your use cases. Take a look at the most discussed topics for February: TestComplete + Chromium based Edge browser support Converting an old project to CSS/XPATH Capturing the Command Line of a Process running in the Task Manager TestComplete license - Desktop module Measure the time it takes for a button to become enabled Academy Certified If you pass an exam successfully and get a certificate, you receive a special badge in the SmartBear Community! Let’s congratulate those who successfully passed TestComplete exams last month and got the Academy Certified badges: claudiaborges ThomasCasserly Edgar Congratulations! That’s all for this newsletter! Thanks everyone for your active participation in TestComplete Community life! You are the people who make this community so supportive and awesome. /SmartBear Community TeamCucumber Community Newsletter #2: BDD in 30 seconds: a graphic Q&A, Meet a Cucumber user
Hi! We're happy to bring you interviews, articles, and tech challenges related to Cucumber, open source, and BDD (with a few intriguing links picked up on our forays ‘round the web). In this issue, we offer: State of the Cucumber BDD in 30 seconds: a graphic Q&A Meet a Cucumber User: Developer advocate Helen Scott talks about the joys of the open source community and her contribution to a public repo somewhere in the Arctic. Fun and useful links: 16 tech blogs written by women, 13 suggestions to reduce fatigue, and 1 Russian winter indie sandbox game State of the Cucumber SmartBear is committed to investing in Cucumber Open Source, and we’re thrilled to announce that a full-time developer joined the team earlier this week. Please pop over to the Cucumber community Slack and say hello to Aurélien Reeves (@Aurélien Reeves) - and while you’re there, why not check out some of our help and committers' channels? We’ve released two new chapters of Cucumber School - chapter 3 in JavaScript, and chapters 3 and 4 in SpecFlow. You can catch up - or sign up - at https://school.cucumber.io/ And Cucumber.js 7.7.0 is out! Aslak wants to tell you all about it! BDD in 30 seconds Meet a Cucumber user: Helen Scott Helen Scott is a Java Developer Advocate at JetBrains. She has over 20 years’ experience in the software industry and has been a developer, technical writer, and product owner. How does Cucumber improve your life? My interaction with Cucumber began with Hacktoberfest, thanks to the wonderful help and support of Marit van Dijk. She pointed me at the issues and helped me understand the process. I updated some documentation and fixed a couple of (front-end!) bugs. The people and community are how Cucumber improves my life. What do you enjoy most about the open source community? I've learned a lot about the process of forking, branching, and rebasing the fork, but more importantly I've met some amazing people who are passionate not only about the work they do, but giving new contributors a great experience. I've learned how willing people are to explain and help you on that journey, and seen a glimpse of the value the open source community brings to software. You don't necessarily need to use the project you're committing to - you just need to use your skills. What do you like most about your role at JetBrains? Do you have any advice for people who might be thinking about changing career paths? As a Technical Writer, I thrived on creation and communication. An internal role change to Product Owner made me realise I also loved strategic aspects, but I missed content creation and working with the whole development department. A few months into the pandemic, I decided it was time to try something new, and ended up at JetBrains as a Developer Advocate, a role I absolutely love. I learn the products and create helpful content. I love listening to how our products are used and learning more about the developer experience as a whole. I also give presentations (from my house) to the community and in turn, learn more about them and what they need. This helps me understand how best I can serve the community with the products I advocate for. If you're looking to change into a career such as developer advocacy, my advice would be to create content and see if you enjoy it. Also, engaging with the community you want to work with is important. Ultimately, believe in yourself, apply for that job even if you don't have every single thing on the job spec, and look for the things that make you happy. It's easy to forget how high the barriers to entry can be for people who are new to programming. Something that appears trivial to someone who’s been doing it a long time may cause a new programmer to stumble and give up altogether. I want to help developers have a better experience, not least because I understand how frustrating it is. On GitHub, you show “Arctic Code Vault Contributor” as a highlight. How can someone earn this cool-sounding accolade? Apparently it's because I contributed to a public repo that’s stashed somewhere super cold in the Arctic. This JSR has not (yet) made it into the Java specification, but my contribution is why I have the badge! Whilst badges are fun, they don't tell the whole story (case in point)! I would focus on doing what you enjoy. I'm just as happy with my little green commit squares on GitHub. Thanks, Helen! Fun and useful links 16 blogs: Edidiong Asikpo’s compilation of great tech blogs written by women (and why you should read them) 13 tips: The CIO of Net Health Remote offers advice on how to sidestep work exhaustion: 13 tips to reduce fatigue 1 long winter: Looking for an indie sandbox game in which you’re cooped up in a post-Soviet era apartment? No plot, no goals, but if you turn on the radio there’s original music? It’s Winter.Cucumber Community Newsletter: congramming, event mapping, and your worst Gherkin
Hey! We're bringing you advice, interviews, links, and tech challenges about Cucumber, open source, and BDD. For our launch, we offer you: Meet a Cucumber user: Test automation engineer Benjamin Bischoff talks about plugins, hackathons, and congramming Fun and useful links: Are you planning to scale BDD across your organization? Do you want to learn about event mapping? Will a Japanese robot wolf keep you safe from bears? Tech challenge: Show us your worst Gherkin and win a prize! Meet a Cucumber user: Benjamin Bischoff Benjamin spent 15 years as a game/application developer and trainer before shifting to test automation (a journey you can read about on his blog). He’s currently a test automation engineer at trivago. 1. How does Cucumber improve your life? One of my first tasks in my current role was to research technologies to simplify writing tests. We desperately needed a more modern and flexible approach. Cucumber was a stand-out project which ticked all the boxes: open source, easy to use and understand, and made the tests much easier to comprehend. This helped me dive in and grasp the inner workings of it. 2. Then you developed two plugins - Cucable and Cluecumber. Do you have any suggestions for people who want to do similar things? For those projects, the starting points were concrete problems. In Cucable's case we needed faster test feedback through test parallelization. However, the existing solutions for Cucumber were either outdated or not flexible enough for our use case. I started the Cluecumber project because we needed clearer and more condensed data about which test scenarios failed and why. This led to the custom reporting solution that could be designed in a more user friendly way. If your company gives you time and resources to try new things, such as hackathons or learning times, you can experiment without having to be instantly successful. Side projects can be super beneficial, even if solutions to your problems already exist. It is said that you should not reinvent wheels - but if you want to know how wheels work, nothing beats creating your own. 3. You wrote on Twitter (@bischoffdev😞 "Programming is good practices. Bad practices should be called congramming." (Underrated tweet.) What's a congramming practice that makes you cringe, and what advice would you give programmers so they'll stop doing it? I strongly believe in best practices such as extensive testing, single responsibility, readability, and late optimization. Also, I’m a strong believer of YAGNI ("You aren't gonna need it", which comes from the extreme programming methodology), meaning you shouldn’t implement features that aren’t immediately necessary. It helps to step back once in a while and ask whether you’ll still be able to understand your code in a few months and - more importantly - if you can extend and refactor it without fear of breaking it. Thanks, Benjamin! If you have interview suggestions (including yourself), tell us at hello@cucumber.io. Fun and useful links This recent Cucumber blogpost will help you scale BDD across your organization. BDD Advocate Jon Acker tells you all about BDD with Event Mapping. And this robot wolf from Japan will keep us all safe from bears. Join the Cucumber Open Source community here Tech challenge: your worst Gherkin Everyone makes Gherkin mistakes. Maybe instead of making it easy for non-technical people to read, you wrote it like a programming language. Maybe you bogged it down with CSS selectors, or littered it with technical points. Help other people learn from your mistakes. Here's a handy blogpost if you need reminders about Cucumber anti-patterns. Send us an example of your worst Gherkin, and tell us the story of what you learned from it. The best/worst/most entertaining example will win a fantastic prize! Everyone who sends us ugly Gherkin will get a Cucumber sticker. Entries will be read by members of the Cucumber team. By submitting, you’re giving us permission to use your name and entry for a future newsletter, blogpost, Tiktok interpretive dance, etc. Thanks for reading! Remember to post your worst Gherkin or talk with us using Comments.
