Testing in 2021, according to my Twitter bookmarks
Tags: testing, twitter, analytics
Published: 2022-02-17 18:09:47

---
title: Testing in 2021, according to my Twitter bookmarks
published: true
date: 2022-01-11 15:00:00 UTC
tags: testing,twitter,analytics
canonical_url: https://gerg.dev/2022/01/testing-in-2021-according-to-my-twitter-bookmarks/
---

My annual roundup of all the things about testing (and working as a programmer more generally) on Twitter that I found interesting enough to bookmark.

- “[A picture is worth a thousand assertions](https://twitter.com/sindokolenchery/status/1346294901965639680?s=20)“, quoting Angie Jones from the [Test And Code podcast](https://testandcode.com/141) (but remember that all those assertions happen at once without being itemized)
- Angie Jones also helped break down [the last two years of development in WebDriver and Cypress](https://applitools.com/blog/selenium-vs-cypress-the-rematch/?utm_campaign=%5BBlog%5D-Selenium-vs-Cypress:-The-Rematch&utm_medium=Organic-Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_term=CAT&utm_content=Blog).
- John Cutler identified[an overlap between observability and product analytics](https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1346542915439345664?s=20), which also works for testing.
- Ben Sigelman pointed out [the difference between observability and monitoring](https://twitter.com/el_bhs/status/1349406398388400128?s=20), and how the compliment each other.
- Some [tips from Google on doing code reviews](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-google-taught-me-about-code-reviews/).
- [This thread started by Nikema Prophet](https://twitter.com/dev_nikema) has a lot of [great books recommendations on writing code](https://twitter.com/dev_nikema/status/1350233517137907713).
- Trish Khoo called the idea that testers have a mindset different from developers “[one of the dumbest myths I’ve ever heard](https://twitter.com/hogfish/status/1351692222421377025?s=20)“, eleven months before [I also wrote about it](https://gerg.dev/2021/12/gatekeeping-in-testing/).
- This quote from W. Edwards Deming struck me as important for my work in metrics, and is still something I need to dig into more: “[It is wrong to suppose that you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it](https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1352827946386382850?s=20)“
- Speaking of metrics, Theresa Neate raised an interesting question: [what are “vanity” testing metrics vs actually meaningful metrics?](https://twitter.com/TheresaNeate/status/1424316848359690247?s=20)
- I didn’t get a chance to participate myself, but I loved this idea from Ministry of Testing to run [test automation challenges](https://twitter.com/ministryoftest/status/1356183518737522695) and have us compare solutions.
- Amy Tobey suggested [renaming “machine learning” to “automated bias”](https://twitter.com/MissAmyTobey/status/1367894771339907073) and I am on board.
- Nat Alison emphasized [how important good documentation is for engineer productivity](https://twitter.com/tesseralis/status/1374191166061637637?s=20), likening it to memoization (i.e., storing the result of an expensive function call).
- Charity Majors shared some [awesome slides about why software should auto-deploy in 15 minutes](https://twitter.com/mipsytipsy/status/1377845930490126336?s=20).
- This was a great roundup of [unpopular opinions about testing](https://applitools.com/blog/unpopular-opinions-software-testing-edition/?utm_campaign=%5BBlog-Post%5D-Unpopular-Opinion:-Software-Testing-Edition&utm_medium=Organic-Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_term=angie-social&utm_content=Blog).
- [Rob McCargow suggested](https://twitter.com/RobMcCargow/status/1381645553843499008?s=20) reading “9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation” by Kevin Roose.
- [Julia Evans](https://twitter.com/b0rk/status/1382383203999219716?s=20), known (by me at least) for [her great zines on programming](https://wizardzines.com/), put together a neat [choose-your-own-adventure game about debugging a computer networking problem](https://computer-mysteries.netlify.app/slow-website.html).
- We’ve all seen photos showing examples of products that look like unit tests worked but the integration tests failed. Johanna South posted a great example of the inverse: [when integration passes even though unit tests failed](https://twitter.com/theQAconnection/status/1441128181914746882).
- I found these [tips on coaching](https://twitter.com/GeePawHill/status/1442524237470728193?s=20) helpful at a time when I was struggling to have an impact.
- Some [_real_ perks of a good employer](https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1463240570990518273?s=20).
- Some great [prompts for articulating hypotheses and research questions](https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1414432716242649088?s=20).
- I can’t find an original source, but [Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne showed up as a fun warning about personas](https://twitter.com/i_anic/status/1465722897524269070).
- This is still a work in progress, but I’m very interested to see what Richard Bradshaw and Mark Winteringham will come up with for their [proposed test automation curriculum](https://twitter.com/FriendlyTester/status/1478800993525673986?s=20).

I’m using twitter less compared to previous years, but you can still find my similar summaries from [2019](https://gerg.dev/2019/12/testing-2019-on-twitter/) and [2020](https://gerg.dev/2020/12/testing-in-2020-according-to-my-twitter-bookmarks/).