Welcome to the 218th issue!

I loved going through this discussion among software engineers:

What is your definition of a Unit, Integration, and End-to-End test?

It's fascinating to see different opinions and interpretations of these test levels.

Especially because you can often see people being misaligned on that.

But what's more important than finding the right answer is that you have one that is commonly shared, understood and respected within your organisation.

So, happy testing! 🙂

Dawid Dylowicz

While some testers want to become developers, other people go the opposite way. Just like S R Harinya Devi who shares some valuable advice after making the move.

What DevOps is really about? And how does it contribute to quality? Hope you'll enjoy Alan Page's thoughts on that as much as I did.

What's more, Diane Edwards describes the Gold, Silver and Bronze Levels of Quality in products, based on 20 years of experience.

Do you write test plans? Bas van Laarhoven suggests that in most cases they may not be needed and could be replaced with another approach.

Similarly, someone started a discussion on that by asking: Do QA people still do test plans?

This is a great overview by Callum Akehurst-Ryan explaining different ways in which testers can bring value to the team and the company.

Additionally, Tina Chenska shares an experience-based view on Why Great Automation Engineers Should Quit Writing Tests.

Marc Domenech shows several examples of using pre-commit hooks for automated code quality checks before committing to the repository.

Marvel Ken-Anele gives examples of all types of test doubles — such as mocks, stubs, fakes, and more — that can be used to make your tests more stable.

You may also want to read Shubham Sharma's guide on The Easiest Way to Identify Flaky Tests in Jest.

I always find it interesting to see how companies approach their test strategy, and in this case, Abhijeet Vashistha describes how they improved test readability and overreliance on mocking.

Aden Huen shares a few good pieces of advice on adopting specific test automation practices when moving from manual to end-to-end testing.

Also, in case you wonder: Should Test Engineers implement unit tests and integration tests?

Testing Spring Boot applications in Java? Here are some practical tips from Alexander Obregon on implementing the test automation strategy.

Razvan Vancea demonstrates a few examples of conveniently setting up test data for your load tests in k6. There's also a video guide if you want to learn more.

Cypress has some powerful features regarding intercepting API calls and even testing APIs. Here's a decent overview of it by Swathika Visagn.

If you enjoyed the contract testing guides from the previous issue, then you may also like Aleh Maisevich's series on using Pact.

In this detailed guide, Indira Nellutla shows how to use Testcontainers to make testing apps with databases easier.

Han Toan Lim shares some interesting insights on using the two systems of thinking from the classic Thinking, Fast And Slow book.

What's the worst automation mistake, according to the creator of Selenium? Jason Huggins gives an example and also shares about the origins of this popular tool in a fascinating interview hosted by Nikolay Advolodkin.

If you test mobile applications, you might be interested in this updated, 16-minute overview of the popular open-source tools by Daniel Knott.

You won't believe what they've done to these bug reports... 🤣

Thanks for reading!

If you like this newsletter and it helps you become a better tester, you can say thanks and buy me a coffee.

Dawid Dylowicz