In this episode of the Vernon Richard Show, Richard and Vernon discuss the growth plans for testers in test automation, focusing on the importance of coding skills, exploratory testing, and the balance between generalist and specialist roles. They explore the need for measurable targets in personal development plans and the significance of understanding the context of problems in software development. The conversation also touches on the impact of AI on software engineering and the necessity for collaboration between testers and developers.

00:00 - Intro

01:42 - The Ramble begins

07:39 - QUESTION (Thanks Thierry!): "How do you see a growth plan for testers in test automation as a personal development plan?"

10:12 - How has Vern helped Testers create an automation development plan?

13:14 - What does it mean to go from novice to advanced?

15:15 - Rich wants to know what test automation means before answering the question!

15:57 - The nuance (and trap!) of the word "tool"

17:35 - Rich has come up with a new term for old testing

19:21 - What about code? Which languages should you learn?

20:34 - Vern's answer to a Redditor asking a similar question

23:34 - Don't forget the reason why we're trying to learn all of these tools and languages

24:24 - Who makes the "best" "automation" testers?

25:45 - What does it look like when an SDET hasn't learned how to identify the right test?

26:34 - Ok if that's you and your team, how can you make it work?

28:33 - Lord of the Rings testing!

29:40 - How does Alan Richardson defeat "Testing Sauron"? (I'll stop the LotR references now I swears it 😇)

31:07 - Noah Sussman's excellent early ideas to solve this problem

32:42 - Generalist or Specialist, what is the core, foundational knowledge needed to call yourself an engineer?

34:18 - ...and what about AI? (only took half an hour!)

35:10 - Vern wants to get back to work asap and start creating growth plans... but for who?

38:20 - What two things are often missed in growth plans?

40:41 - Rich talks about the tangible difference between being a novice and advanced SDET/Automation Specialist/Toolsmith

41:39 - The cognitive load of your engineers

42:17 - Production code vs Automation code: Which is more important? Rich breaks it down.

44:27 - What are we optimising for?

47:45 - Do we have to choose between readability and efficiency though?

52:52 - Learning through pain

54:12 - Rich and Vern wonder what they should do next

54:32 - What makes this relevant in today's job market

55:22 - One last wild take about software development careers...

Links to stuff we mentioned during the pod:

03:23 - The Øredev conference in Malmö
- Get your tickets here!
04:13 - The LLEWT peer testing workshop
- Check out this summary from last years event by James Thomas
- Read about the origins of this flavour of workshop
06:40 - Cynefin a sense-making framework devised by Dr Dave Snowden
- Here's Dr Snowden explaining the framework
- Enabling Constraints
- The Paradox of Choice (which I didn't know was a book - readingList++)
07:39 - Here's the full question from Thierry as he asked it on LinkedIn
14:14 - "GUI Automation"
- A term used to describe tools focused on driving browsers. Some examples of such tools would include Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, and Watir.
15:57 - I'll link to Rich's article once it's published 🙂
16:04 - Automation in Testing (AiT)
- Automation in Testing references (via Perplexity)
16:18 - Some tools and frameworks Rich mentioned:
18:50 - Rich's API Testing article on Qt QA blog
19:07 - Rich's article explaining the different kinds of GUI Automation
19:21 - What's a scripting language vs an object-oriented language?
- According to Perplexity
- Key takeaway: These are not mutually exclusive terms and label to two different aspects of programming languages
  - Scripting: how code is run
  - Object-orietned: how code is organised
19:36 - Programming languages
- TypeScript
- Java
- C# (pronounced "See-Sharp")
- JavaScript
19:52 - Mark Winteringham
- Mark's website
- Mark's GenAI book
- Mark's LinkedIn
20:34 - The article called "Career Advice For A 35+ Year Old Manual Tester"
26:54 - Erik "I love orange" Davis
- Erik's LinkedIn
27:42 - Rich's S.A.C.R.E.D. model
29:40 - Alan Richardson
- Alan's website
- Alan's Patreon community
- Alan's LinkedIn
31:02 - Noah Sussman
- Noah's stupendous blog post "How to teach yourself to be a technical tester: some thoughts."
- Noah's LinkedIn
- Highly recommend that you watch Noah's talks on anyOfTheThings
32:24 - Then the effervescent Michael Larsen actually went through the thing!
- He documented his journey with it too.