And so Testhor was!

Testhor or how Jackie Chan led me to a career in automated testing and web development...

Welcome to Testhor! In these lines, I share my journey in the world of web development and automation, a path strewn with obstacles, discoveries, and surprisingly, Jackie Chan movies. Imagine a blend of coding and stunts, where each bug becomes an adventure. From my beginnings on Windows XP to mastering automated testing, I invite you to explore with me the playful and surprising facets of testing and the web.

Genesis

In the beginning, my parents bought the monitor and the computer...

While my genesis didn't start exactly like that, our adventure certainly began around 2005, when my parents, in their immense wisdom, bought our first tower. This revolution, which I coveted as much at school as with my peers, was finally within my reach. We're not talking about a mere toy for playing hangman or learning Basic on a ridiculous calculator screen; no, this was a real computer, OUR computer! A computer running Windows XP, with a slow internet connection whose life hung by a thread... the telephone line...

From a young age, one trait that defined me was curiosity. Even more so, every trip to town since I was 6 years old was an opportunity to pester my parents for a historical or scientific encyclopedia... Yes, I know... a child who knows how to have fun! You'll understand then that the arrival of a computer at home changed everything... No more need for encyclopedias, the knowledge of the world was now within my reach! Moreover, not only did I now have a way to quench my thirst for knowledge, but I also had the possibility to create my own content; to share my passions with the world!

Jackie Chan

When we received this computer, I was about 10 years old. For the future, I dreamed of becoming either a historian, specifically an Egyptologist, or Jackie Chan... I was passionate about many subjects, but in the cinematic realm, it was Jackie Chan who impressed me the most. I wasn't very athletic, but the way Jackie Chan made the word "art" in martial arts fascinating and stimulating to me. Quite simply, I wanted to share my extensive knowledge about this actor. How? Through the web, of course!

This desire to share about Jackie Chan led me to learn how to develop my own website. I headed to Site du Zéro to learn HTML, CSS, and then gradually PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. I eventually created my little fansite about Jackie Chan, but more importantly, I learned all the joy I could have in designing a website, especially if it was to share content I loved. I spent my adolescence creating small websites that allowed me to showcase my interests of the moment. Both in CEGEP and at university, these interests, fueled by insatiable curiosity, led me to explore various disciplines like management informatics, geomatics, philosophy, communication, administration, history, and so on.

And what about automation?

At every stage of my academic journey, technology has been a tool and a driver inviting me to learn. In humanities, I never stopped programming and developing all sorts of web applications. Throughout my studies and personal projects, I got into software development, in VB.net, then C++, Python... This journey allowed me to discover two things: how much I love the web and how much I am passionate about automation!

In 2022, while writing a thesis combining historical discipline and computer science, I started looking for a job. After a second interview, I became an automated tester... To be honest, I didn't even know what automated testing was exactly... In 2013-2014, while studying management informatics, we never discussed testing during my training... But I knew one thing, it was a developer job and it involved automation.

Automated Tester

Nevertheless, I still had a good idea of what a tester was, and I could still imagine what my new job would look like. To be honest, at first, I saw this job as a half-victory, because I had mentally pictured an automated tester as being less "prestigious" than a developer. This testing job, in my eyes, was a stepping stone towards a "real" developer position...

Like everything I undertake, I threw myself into it wholeheartedly. I began my exploration of the fascinating world of automated testing through SoapUI, JUnit, Cypress, Postman, while occasionally participating in the development of the project to be tested, but especially in developing a range of tools and tests aimed at facilitating the development and the QA phase of the product. This was an opportunity to work on projects in Java, Groovy, Python, JavaScript, Rust, and Shell.

In a very short time, I realized that I had a very poor understanding of the role. It was not a sub-role of a developer, it was even better! In truth, the role of an automated tester requires mastering the product's code, business logic, critical thinking, and resourcefulness because, although it is possible to test superficially by limiting oneself to a framework, the context can lead to testing a range of technology and requires creativity to come up with solutions. Likewise, testing frameworks do allow for automating execution, but why not automate the automation by generating tests from data?

Today

Today, after more than a year and a half in automated testing, I am grateful to have fallen into this unknown territory, as my role truly grants me freedom in development, as well as gives me the feeling of doing something useful and quality-enhancing. Reading through various subreddits on test automation, I realize that unfortunately, the role is not as well integrated everywhere. I am fortunate to be actively participating in development and collaborating day by day with a team of passionate developers. Likewise, my involvement in the entire process has intensified since I have also been the scrum master of my team for a year. Although this dual role is demanding, it is complementary and allows me to have an excellent overview of our entire process.