Medium Weekly 002 by Miki Szeles

Similarly to Hashnode, I also collect the most insightful articles from Medium.com.

In this series, in addition to the wider list, I always highlight a narrow selection of these awesome articles. From this week I found Eka Setya Nugraha’s writing How I lost my passion as a Software Developer the most insightful.

Eka proved to be an extraordinarily brave person and developer by sharing his very personal story about the dark side of being a software developer. I am with you Eka and thank you very much for sharing your heart touching story with the community. I also wrote my story of the human side of being a software developer. For me, it includes years of depression and impostor syndrome. But I was not brave enough yet to post it.

Test Automation and Testing

This week’s favourite in this category is iteo’s post in which he shared 10 useful Chrome extensions for software testers. It is definitely worth a look. I also added the 11th Selenideium Element Inspector with which test automation teams can save hours daily. At the moment it supports Selenide and Selenium but next week a huge feature update will come with support for Cypress, Playwright, TestCafe and Squish. I highly advise you to check it in case you would like to boost your productivity.

Let’s see the other awesome writings.

• Webomates brought us an excellent article about the challenges of test automation. In this writing, they are explaining what are false fails which every software tester should know.
• The Test Lead explained what is regression testing and why it is important in his post Regression Testing Simplified 2022. This is definitely something that every software tester should know. In another article of The Test Lead he introduces the different types of non-functional tests which I found very valuable especially as I had to choose a performance testing tool recently about which you can read on my blog.
• Gary Parker wrote a very interesting article about the combination of Selenium and Machine Learning. I have just attended the Future of Testing frameworks online event a few days ago (you can read my report here). It was a great event with good presentations, but I was a little bit disappointed as I have not really heard too much about the future of test automation frameworks. It was much more about the present. To compensate for this you can learn more about the future from Gary Parker’s article and also from my article written about Healineum which is a self-healing test automation framework.
• Serena Gray brought a very important topic: Automated regression testing. In my opinion that is the only way, you can go in our fast-paced agile world.
• Selecting an automation tool is not an easy task, but with the right guidance you can do it much easier. Recently I had the opportunity to choose an E2E testing framework and also a performance testing tool. I hope you will find my writings valuable and I also hope you will find Team Merlin’s writing valuable too. In their article, they are explaining the 5Ws & 1H of selecting a tool. Happy reading. 😊
• Marcin Ludzia brought us 6 test automation technologies to watch in 2022. I also added the 7th one which I am pretty sure will be the next big thing in test automation. It is Selenide. Why should Selenide be there? Selenide is an E2E test automation framework built on top of Selenium WebDriver having the same functionality and much more. It has easier syntax, advanced selectors, no more StaleElementReferenceExceptions, built-in profiler and more. I have created a Selenium vs. Selenide comparison I highly recommend checking it, or just simply join the Selenide LinkedIn group where everybody interested in E2E test automation or in test automation, in general, are warmly welcomed.
• Vladimir Tiulenev explains why we have to be very cautious while we are focusing on test coverage in his excellent writing Test Coverage.
• Sajitha Pathirana wrote 2 articles about hard assertions and soft assertions. Personally, I never understood why soft assertions are useful. I am not telling that I will extensively use them from now on, but at least I know what are they good for. 😊
• Study Section brought us the 7 principles of testing, which is a must-learn for every software tester.
• Nistha Jain brought us a Selenium vs. Cypress comparison. I would happily read a Selenide vs. Cypress comparison from him to see where Cypress excels compared to Selenide. 😊
• In today's tech world soft skills are equally important to technical skills in my opinion. Bisma Latif brought an important topic in his writing Emotional Intelligence in Software Testers.
• Tomasz Buga has quite an extensive series on test automation with Selenium and he immediately wind his way into my heart when I saw he is posting about Selenide. 😊 Tomasz Buga Have you heard about the Selenide LinkedIn group? You are warmly welcomed there.
• OptiSol Business Solutions collected 5 best automation testing tools in their writing Top 5 Best Automation Testing Tools In 2021. OptiSol Business Solutions as you mentioned Selenium, I really recommend checking Selenide which is superior to Selenium.
• Oluwatomi Familoni brought a very important topic to the table in his writing Getting Started with Test Automation Code Reviews. Clean code and code reviews for test code is equally important to have the same for production code. After reading the book How Google Tests Software (about which you can find my writing here with some important takeaways), I even achieved at my company to include me in developer code reviews as well. It can really help a lot in testing in case I understand the implementation of the system, and I can collect ideas about what to test.
• Mohammad Faisal Khatri shares his journey of transitioning from a manual tester to a test automation engineer. I highly recommend reading it and following him in the transition. Becoming a test automation engineer is a very profitable journey both personally and financially. 😊
• Courtney Zhan the daughter of Zhimin Zhan shared her advice on how to be productive from your first day at work in her article Set up Running Automated UI tests on your First day at work.

Software Development

• Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #6 A quiet man of sincerity attracts admiration (桃李不言，下自成蹊) is the 6th part of Zhimin Zhan’s excellent series in which he tells a Chinese Idiom Story and then applies it to software development. It is a must-read.

Blogging, Writing and Journaling

From this topic, my number one recommendation goes to Zulie Rane. She is definitely a writer worth following in case you would like to learn how to write and how to earn money by writing. However I have not earned any money by writing yet (ok, I have to admit, I got 0.95BAT on Hashnode, but that money came from my colleague so that does not count 😊), I would like to change that in the future. Zulie Rane provides 5 valuable pieces of advice on how to get more stability from your freelance writing in her article Your Freelance Revenue Is Causing Financial Instability. Here Are 5 Ways to Fix That and she also mentions 3 boring income streams which earns her $5k/month she also wrote an article How I Gave Myself a 25% Raise — Even Though I’m a Freelancer.

• Under the title How To Break Into Journalism With No Prior Experience, you can read Bram Berkowitz’s invaluable advice on how to become a recognized writer. However his journey started in offline writing, this article is still very valuable for all of us bloggers, (technical) writers, journalists.
• Eva Rtology wrote a very interesting article about Data-Driven Fiction. I won’t tell more, just read it. 😊 By the way Eva Rtology I asked a question under your post, I would really appreciate it if you could answer it. ❤
• Sean Kernan wrote an awesome article with the title How to Win Arguments with Stupid, Stubborn People. It is a must-read for every writer especially as we are living in a world filled with trolls. I was surprised, but even in the tech industry, there are many trolls.

Self-improvement, Productivity, Psychology, Worklife

I would like to introduce Maya Sayvanova. She is a Bulgarian Wife and Mother. According to her profile, she is taller than necessary. 🧡 This time she gladdens us with her writing Who Are You: My Best Friend’s Surprising Lesson.

She is quite a prolific writer I brought another two writings from her in one of them she gave pretty valuable advice in her own unique style on writing: The Most Chaotic Writer In The World Shows You How To Choose A Writing Niche and the other one is Working for Yourself Sucks Sometimes, but It’s Better Than a Day Job.

Let’s see the other great posts from this section.

• Darshak Rana wrote about the 10–3–2–1–0 Bedtime Routine which can highly improve your productivity. In case you combine this with the 5 am club, I promise, you will become an unstoppable productivity hero. 😊
• The Wisdom Diaries continued thanks to Sam Wren-Lewis with week 8. He spent a week on a farm completely offline and he shared his experiences and lessons learned with us. I definitely advise you to check it.
• In the first paragraph of Benjamin Hardy, PhD’ writing you can read the following: “According to meta-analytic data, confidence isn’t what leads to success. Instead, successful behaviour is what creates confidence.”. I found it very insightful and true so I highly recommend reading his article: 13 Signs You’ve Leveled-Up As A Person.
• Evan Wildstein was wondering about “Wouldn’t it be interesting if companies had organizational pre-cana with new employees?” in his article What if We Treated Our Relationships With Employers Like Marriage?. It definitely worth reading for everyone who works as an employee.
• This is my last week of the probation period at my new workplace DMG MORI Heitec Digital Kft. In a few days, we will decide whether we will continue working together or not. I have already written many stories about my probation period, which I will start posting next Friday. 😊 Right after reading Linda Castrilli ‘s article Is Your Company a Cult? Four Tell-Tale Signs I ran a check on my company, and luckily none of the signs was valid for it. What about your company? 😊
• Svaťa Šimara shared a very interesting DIY project. He made his own standing desk. Luckily I do not have to make my own, as I will get one in a few weeks from my company, but you might want to follow his advice and build your own standing table.

Data Analysis and Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Deep learning

From this section my favourite article is Amardeep Parmar’s Could AI Fix The Company “Fit” Problem?. I am a big fan of AI, but I have never heard about AI used in recruiting. Up till now. However I prefer personal interaction much more, I would definitely give a try to an interview conducted by an AI. What about you?😊

Let’s see the other cool topics.

• Galen B joined Google in 2019. He brought some insights about how Google does data engineering in his article 5 Ways Google Does Data Engineering Differently.
• Actually, Galen B doubled this week with his writing How Google is Killing the Data Scientist. It is a very interesting post again. I won’t spend any extra word on it, the title speaks for itself. 😊

And that’s it. Feel free to add any great content in the comment section.

Have a nice week. 😊

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