259: New Way To Learn Test Automation with Angie Jones

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Welcome to the Test Talks podcast, the place to go to geek out on software testing. And now your host whose mission is to help you succeed with test automation, Joe Colantonio.

Hey, it's Joe. And welcome to the Test Guild Automation podcast currently known as Test Guild Talks. Are you trying to find a way to learn more about test automation? Maybe you've been putting off getting started or you just can't find the time or the right resource to help boost your learning activities. Or maybe you want to refresh or enhance what you already know about automation. If so, this episode is for you. Listen up as we test talk with Angie Jones all about ways to learn more about automation testing. So listen up and discover a must know resource for the automation testing community. Check it out.

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Hey Angie, welcome back to Test Talks.

Thank you Joe.

Great to have you back. As always, you're a fan favorite and today I'd like to talk about an awesome new initiative I think you started. I'm gonna hold off what it is until the end, but it's a new resource. I think people all should know about that into test automation. But I also want to pick your brain around automation in general because having an expert like you, who knows where this is going to go. So.

Before we get into it, Angie, last time we spoke was in March and I think you were at Twitter back then. So has anything changed since, since last year?

Yeah. So I am doing a new role now. So I've left Twitter, I've joined aplitools and I've joined them as a developer advocate. So this is a relatively new role in tech where.

The person is basically a liaison between the community and the company. And so a lot of big companies are starting to get these. Google has hundreds of them. Microsoft has quite an army of them. And it's really great because it allows for the person to they're a representative of their community. In my case, I'm an automation engineer. I've been doing this forever. I have a really good sense of what we need as automation engineers. And so that's very helpful to my company to be like kind of the in house resident expert about automation, but also to help educate the community on all things automation. Not just applitudes and specifically, but all things Test automation in general. So, you know, I was doing a lot of conference speaking and workshops and things like this while I was working at Twitter and it became quite difficult for me to balance it all to do my.

Community advocacy work and then also to be in some foreign country working through the night doing my eight hours of automation engineering for Twitter.

I sought out an opportunity to basically give back to the community full time. So. So that's what I'm doing now.

Awesome. Angie, I just want to highlight what you mentioned there. Even though you work for a company, I've been to two or three year sessions that you've done on conferences and you hardly mention the company you work for. So it's. You're not like a salesperson. Just want people to know that you're. It's almost like you're an advocate of best practices for automation and by doing that, you know, your company benefits from that. Off your education efforts, I guess.

Exactly. So I'm, I'm not a salesperson at all.

I refuse to, you know, be like one company's cheerleader. I'm just all about doing what's best in test automation and helping people. And so that's beneficial of course to the community, but also beneficial to my company because, you know, of course it's in their best interest that everyone does test automation. Right, right, right. And so it's a win, win for everyone.

So it's also cool about being a developer advocate is you're able to go to different countries and learn, I guess, what people are struggling with. You're probably always interacting with a bunch of different people in a bunch of different situations. Because I'm a shut in, basically. I'm just curious to know, maybe a dumb question. All the different countries you've been in, do all testers face the same issues? Does that make any sense?

It's like, yeah, yeah, you think that things would be different, like maybe there's some cultural variances and things like that. For the most part the issues are the same. Like in some countries you may see where maybe a certain language is more popular than other countries or a certain testing tool or technique is more popular. For example, when I go to the uk, very heavy with BDD and automation tools that support that, like cucumber and such. Right. That's not as heavy in the us but at the end of the day all of the struggles are genuinely the same generally. Yeah.

How do you stay current in your role? Do you still get hands on in a project?

That's a great question because a lot of People are actually concerned about me, which I love. When I was making this transition, it was like, oh, my God, you're so technical. You can't lose that. Like, how are you going to, you know, still get to code and do things like that? And that's very important to me as well.

Sometimes we see where people have been removed from teams for years and years, and yet they're talking to us about techniques that are really no longer relevant or they won't work in today's climate. Right. So it's really important to me that I stay.

Current and up to date on my skills. What's so great about this role is that I get to code, like, whatever I want and whenever I want, so I'm not boxed to whatever stack my team is using. Whereas, you know, when I was working for companies, whatever tool stack we say we were using, we were using Java and we were using Selenium and we were using Junit, then that's it. That's. That's basically all the skills that I had. Whereas in this role, if I see something neat or cool, I can just do it, like during my 9 to 5 and try it out. Because it's my job now to stay up to date on what's going on and what tools are available and, you know, blog about them or write about them or speak about them. Like, for example, last week I played with this really cool tool approval test for API testing. And so I just did that, like, and I can do that at work, you know, and, and write up about it and help educate people on how to do that. So I'm doing a lot of coding in this role, but more importantly, I'm doing it on a lot of different tools and techniques and on the things that I'm interested in. So it's really, really fun for me.

Awesome. I think I even saw a video. You were coding live in India and people were like, what?

So, yeah, I've started doing live demos. I'm glad you brought that up. I started doing live demo. So I guess before this year, most of my talks, you know, I was just speaking. And so I challenged myself this year. And that's also as part of this role to make sure that I'm keeping up to date with my skills. Like, okay, and some of my talks, I'm going to do some live coding on stage. Let's make sure, you know, that I still got it. Everybody else sees that I still got it, and if I don't have it, people will call me out and I want that, you know, Also, Angie, for.

Me, looking outside in it seems like you have like a teacher's heart or spirit because, you know, you're a Java instructor at the college level and you also do a lot of mentoring. If you go on Twitter, people always send your guru, you've mentor them. And you also speak at almost every conference I knew about. So. So this is going to lead into the main point of it. But is teaching something you've always been interested in?

I think so, Joe. I hadn't recognized that up until a couple of years ago, but I started out just kind of like doing online tutoring.

And then, yeah, I started teaching at one of the local colleges. Teachers teaching like programming courses there. And in my engineering role, I started just like blogging and teaching people how to do stuff. And so I think you're absolutely right that there's something there. I have this heart of a teacher. I really enjoy learning concepts and sharing them with other people. And I think I'm pretty good at making things really plain and simple. That's one of the things people love about taking like my workshops or courses. Like, you take something that's really complex and you make it to where everyone understands it. And I think it's a gift.

So here's my segue. So I definitely agree with you and I think that's why I thought it was really cool how maybe I'm right. I think you were the brainchild behind the new Test Automation University going on in applitools.

So here's how Test Automation University started. So.

You know, I do workshops at conferences pretty regularly and you know, I might be doing a workshop somewhere often Tokyo or whatever. Well, if you live in the U.S. joe, you can't go to my Tokyo workshop, you know, unless you have a really nice employer who's going to send you. And so I would get comments from people over the years asking, am I going to put my workshops online and make them access accessible for people who can't go to the conferences. And so I said, that's interesting. Isn't something a goal of mine. But at the time when I was working, you know, at Twitter and stuff, I really didn't have the time to do something like that. So once I got to applitools and this became a part of my role, this aligned very nicely. So doing courses would be something that's great to do. So, you know, I thought I ran it by the team. Like, yeah, I want to, you know, maybe do a couple of courses on, you know, some of the things I have workshops on. And, you know, where can we host this? And, you know, how can we make this a reality? And the team here is really great. So I work with a really great team of very smart and innovative people. And so they were like, oh, we can do a whole university. And, you know, it doesn't just have to be. You could be other people teaching and we could have all the things, like all the courses. And Joe, I was like, oh my God, this is not what I had in mind at all. Like, you know, I just wanted to do a couple, you know, like a little web driver course. Well, you know, this and that, you know, a couple of little courses. But they had a bigger vision in mind and it, to be honest, it really scared me. Scared me. I didn't agree to it right away. I had to sit on it for like a week or two and digest that and figure out, like, how can this be possible? Because, you know, like, my schedule is very hectic, so running something like that would take quite a bit of work time and commitment. And so I had to get on board with if I would be able to do it or not. And the more I thought about it, the more I saw a need for it, the more I looked at my network of people who I've met over the years at these different conferences, all of these brilliant experts in different techniques or tools and test automation, I realized we have to do this, we have to make this, this, this one stop shop where you can learn from all of these branches. Brilliant minds. And that's how Tess Automation University was very cool.

So people here in Tesla Automation University for the first time at a high level. So what is, is it a. An online learning portal that people can go to? Do they pay? Is it free?

You know, so it is a online website and there are courses. The vision is to have courses on all things test automation. I have a very clear vision of the courses that I'd like to produce, falling into four different lanes. UI Automation, Mobile Automation, API Automation as well as Codeless.

All of the courses are absolutely free, so, so that was very important to me.

As someone who cares about the community and wanting to put these courses out. I want people to have this because there are so many people who are either looking to get into test automation, some of them don't have the support of their current employer. So these are things that they have to take on their own in their spare time to try to get their skills up, or there are people who are currently being tasked with doing test automation and yet don't have the skills for that. And so.

Trying to like find the courses can be very overwhelming. There's like this gif and a curse where there's a bunch of information online, but also kind of too much information online. So you don't know like which sources you can trust, which ones are credible, which ones are still up to date. You know, it's a lot of factors and if you don't know the space, it could be very daunting. Right. So that's why we have Test Automation U as this kind of one stop shop where you know, everyone here I have personally vetted. Right. So I seek out the instructors myself and if someone expresses interest to me then, you know, I'm kind of vetting them out. It's like an interview process and making sure that they actually know what it is that they're talking about. And so the, the instructors are top notch people in the industry. All of the courses are free. That was like I said, that was very important to me. And that's where applitools comes in. So applitools sponsors this initiative. So we have developers to create the platform. So applitools sponsors that, we have editors, you know, who need to build the transcripts and edit the courses. So applitools covers everything that and also covers payment to the instructor. So I wouldn't dare ask these instructors to do this just, you know, for free or in their spare time. And so we make sure that they are compensated as well. So really thankful to Applititudes for sponsoring this initiative and with them doing so, the community can have access to these courses for no charge.

Angie, you just mentioned four areas. How did you choose those four areas to focus in on?

Yeah, so when I looked at.

What type of jobs and roles are out there, like what do you typically do when you do test automation? So you're either going to do like a UI type role where you are automating against an interface. You're gonna either automate against some mobile applications, right. Or maybe you're automating against API. So some API testing, sometimes you're doing a mix of both with UI and API or mobile and API. Those were the three I initially was going with. But then I started seeing an interest in codeless solutions. So more and more people started asking me about like Selenium, IDE and testim.

I realized like, okay, that's still a need in the community. So we added that lane as well. So those are the four lanes. There's also like programming courses like Core. So I've released a core Java Programming course that is not focused on test automation at all really. There's one chapter in there at the end that just kind of shows you how everything we've learned thus far applies to test automation. But it was really important to me to make sure that people have fundamental skills in programming because I see that's where a lot of people fail when trying to do test automation. Like they learn some tool and just enough programming to use that tool, but are lacking that foundation. So offering in classes like that as well will open it up to anything that's not in these forms lanes. Like it'll help you with either any of these lanes. But also if you're doing something like before I've done component level testing right. Where I'm not, it's not considered like UI or mobile, not really even API. But you know, functionally I still needed to test this via automation. So having those skills as well. So I really sat down and thought about this. I gave it a lot of time and thought about like all of the different areas people would need and came up with these four umbrella categories.

Awesome. And as you mentioned, that was my next question about the Java. The Java question came up. There's a lot of buzz around it. And as you mentioned, it's not just for testing, it's for anyone that wants to learn programming is what it sounds like.

Yeah. So this Java course, while it's on Test Automation University, I was like, okay, am I going to do, I know I needed to do a Java course, right? Am I going to do this Java for test automation or do I just do Java?

I contemplated this for a while and I decided to just do core Java, forget about automation for a minute. If you take this Java course course, you're prepared, you can go learn your next tool. So if you need to learn Selenium, that's fine and it'll come a whole lot easier because now you know how to code. But this course, yes, there's a lot of buzz around it because this is, this is what people need. We hear a lot of industry leaders who will say, you need to learn how to code, you need to learn how to code. And the way people have been going about that so far has been, okay, I guess I'll pick up Selenium or, you know, Cypress or whatever, some tool and then try to learn the tool. But you're learning that tool and you're trying to learn coding at the same time. And that's a huge jump, right. If to go from not doing this at all to having to learn all that at the same time. So I decided to just do the core job, of course, and that's open this up to anyone. Like you can take this course and then go on and do development really, if you wanted to. Right. So I have a lot of developers who were very excited about this as well. Maybe they come from another language or they are somebody who wants to get into tech and so they're like, oh, this is beautiful, this free Java course.

And so they're taking it to learn how to do like Android development and stuff like this. So it's really good course for everyone once wanting to learn how to code. And it's very entry level. I tell people, like, anyone can take this. You can be like someone off the street with no experience in tech and you can take this course and learn how to code.

That's a good point. I must sound like a stalker. But someone else I think on Twitter mentioned that they were going to take the course with their daughter. So this very. Since like, like you mentioned it was it's for anyone to learn programming.

Right, Right. And I've. It's equivalent to a full semester of Java at a university. So like I said, I used to teach at the college and this is one of the courses I taught Java programming. And so I made sure to cover like all of the topics that I would cover in a semester. So, you know, it's not like some short, brief intro, um, it's not a extremely long class, it's maybe like five hours. But that's because, you know, I'm good at making things concise but still giving you the information. So people have been raving about it because I include a lot of examples. You know, I'm not just saying, oh, this is a variable and expecting you to remember this. Like I give examples, real problems and say, okay, let's solve these problems. And they are problems that people can relate to. And so then it starts clicking like, oh, okay, I get it now. There's also optional exercises for people to do on their own. So people have been doing them to make sure they really lock in with their learning.

It seems like there's some sort of gamification going on too to help them with their learning.

Yeah. So on Test Automation University, all of the courses also include quizzes and when you take the quizzes there, you know questions about the course. Of course, each chapter has a quiz and then you earn credits when you take the quizzes. And with the credits you.

Also earn badges and you earn certificates. And so it's really fun. Like People are like trying to collect all of the different badges because each course has a unique badge and all of them are really cute. We have a designer who designs the badges and so it's like, oh, that course's badge is so cool. I have to collect that one. Right. And so people end up taking the course. So there's that gamification aspect. The certificates are really nice as well. They're shareable on like, Twitter and LinkedIn. So we have a lot of people who are sharing their success with the broader world, which is great because we really want this to be like, community driven. Right. While I'm directing it, it's very community driven, so people are sharing it with, with others and it's really, it's a fun way to learn.

So, Andy, also, you know, I believe that not only when people teach their teaching, but they're also learning. And this is something I like to ask people that create courses or they're getting feedback from a course. Is there anything you learned from doing this course that as you were writing it or videoing?

Yeah, yeah. So I actually have three courses I've done so far and we've launched Test Automation University in January and there's about 20 courses out now, so we're really cranking them out. And I've done three of them. So I've done a. Setting a foundation for successful test automation. This one, people were raving about this one because this one is great for everybody. There's no code in this one at all. I wanted to take a step back and say, listen, before we touch a tool, let's think about the mindset needed for test automation. Let's think about the culture that's needed in your company. How do you set yourself up for success? What are the strategies involved? Right. And so I have a course just on that. And this forced me to really sit down and think about all that goes into coming up with a test automation strategy. So this one is really great. People who've been doing test automation forever, they've taken and they were like, wow, I learned something new. People who have not started test automation, of course, they've loved IT managers. It's a great course for them to figure out, like, okay, how do I set my team up?

The other course I did was a visual testing course. And so I knew visual testing, you know, I knew how to use it just like the basic way, right? So this one, I learned a whole bunch about all of the different techniques and it forced me to think about how to use it strategically, like what cases Would certain approaches make sense? And, and when does it not make sense? And so I learned a ton with that course. And then the Java course, I'm certified, I'm a certified Java programmer. I've taught at the college level. This is the language I've been using my whole career. And I still learned some new things as I needed to explain them. Right. And so explaining the different rules of certain things, like okay, this is how you do this, but here are some gotchas. I had to really explore that, like what are the gotchas? You know, and then I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just limited to Java 8, which is what everybody is on. We're up to Java 12 now. So I wanted to include some of the newer features that I haven't gotten to play with because you know when you work somewhere you use whatever version that the dev team is using. Most people are on 8. So this gave me the opportunity to really play with like 9 and 10 and 11. And so I included some of the newer features from Java in there.

So Angie, you mentioned there were a few gotchas. Is there any like one gotcha you could share with the folks you think people trip up on with Java in automation or Java in general?

So a lot of it was around like maybe like Inheritance or like using abstract classes and overloading and overriding methods. All of that stuff has rules to it, like some of the things you would expect to work a certain way, but because it inherited from another class it may work a little bit differently. So those were some of the things that I cover and like I said it's so I would cover them using like really examples so that it really made sense to people.

So Angie, are there any other courses or any other instructors that people can expect when they go to Test Automation University?

We talked a lot about me and we talked about like the courses that I've put out. But we have some really fantastic people who are teaching the courses, such as Alan Richardson. He is somebody who is very, very well respected in the test automation community. He's the author of three or four different testing books. He is constantly on a daily basis putting out content and teaching us how to do things. He has a JavaScript course and JavaScript is becoming very popular in the testing community. This is a leading programming language for front end developers. A lot of testers are starting to look at this for their skill set. He's actually teaching a JavaScript course which is really cool because he's doing it within Chrome dev tools. You get a two for one. With that one, you learn some JavaScript and you learn all of these cool things that you never knew that you could do in the dev tools. I'm enjoying taking that course. We have Dave Hefner. Dave Hefner is somebody, before I ever started speaking speaking or anything like that, he was somebody who I was following and I subscribed to his newsletter to learn how to use Selenium better. Right. And now we have the Dave Hefner who has produced a course on Selenium IDE and talking about. I know that Joe, you've done some webinars and some blog posts around all of the cool new features in Selenium Ide and Dave has a full, full course on that as well. We have Amber Race, who is a whiz at API testing and performance testing. She's actually done two courses there. We have Bas Dykstra, who is also a whiz at API testing. He has a course. Jason Auburn, who is really into the AI space. He has a course on implementing AI driven locators for your Appium test. We have Shashi Jack Tap. Shashi is the iOS test automation expert. Like when I had to build iOS automation framework at Twitter, Shashi was my go to guy because there wasn't a lot of documentation on how to use like XCUI test. So anytime I would get stuck, I was in Shashi's inbox bugging him. And so it was great to be able to reach out to Shashi and say, I need you to do a CUI test course for us. Would you do that? And everybody I've asked, Joe, has been more than willing to do the course. They're like, yes, absolutely, tell me what you need. And it's really, really beautiful to see all of these great minds come together for this community initiative.

Yeah, I completely agree. The quality of the instructors, a lot of them have been Guild conference speakers. So it's people that I've worked with and I know that they're really delivering the goods there. So awesome stuff. All right, Angie, before we go, what's the best way that folks can get started with Test Automation University? And what's the best way folks can find or contact you?

Okay, so you come to Test Automation U.

And you can enroll. And when you enroll, you have access. Really, you have access to all the courses even if you don't enroll. But the gamification aspect, like taking the quizzes and earning the credits and the badges, that's assigned to an account. So you would enroll if you want to do that all of the courses are video courses and there's also transcripts available. So some people learn better from video and watching, some people learn better from read. Reading. So you have both options available to you. So yeah, you just come to test automationu.com enroll and you'll see all of the courses there. Now, like I said, we just got started in January, so my focus so far has been on just getting these courses out here for you. So there's quite a few and if you're new, it might be like, okay, which one of these am I supposed to be taking?

What we're working on are pathways as well. There would be guided pathways. Like I said, we have the ui, the mobile, the API, the codeless. We want to support.

A lot of different languages. So Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python.

We'Re going to have these pathways where you can say something like, hey, I want to learn about mobile automation and I Want to use JavaScript and we'll show you like a guided pathway. Okay, here's what you should take first, followed by this and have it all listed out. We also have a Slack channel, so if you want to communicate with instructors or other people who are taking the courses, that Link is on Test AutomationU.com in the header. And it's a wonderful community. People are learning together. It's really, really great. I'm so, so proud of this initiative. I live on Twitter, so definitely hit me up there. My DMs are open. My hands though is Techgirl1908. I also have a blog about test automation strategies and techniques. AngieJones Tech so if you're not on Twitter and you want to reach out to me, you can do so there. And I'm also on LinkedIn.

Angie Jones thanks again Angie for your automation awesomeness. For links to everything of value we covered in this episode, head over to test talks.com259 and while you're there, make sure to click on that. Sign up for a free trial link under the exclusive sponsor section to learn all about Sauce Labs awesome products and services. So that's it for this episode of Test Talks. I'm Joe and my mission is to help you succeed with creating automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.

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