It’s Sunday following the 9th week of Tech Elevator’s 14-week coding Bootcamp in Columbus, Ohio.
This week we finished our course on the ASP.NET MVC 5 Framework. We studied automated testing and worked on our third ‘Capstone’ project. In addition to the school work, I’ve put a lot of time into my job search and worked on my own ‘passion project.’ Completing the course on ASP.NET MVC is a major benchmark in the bootcamp. I’m now able to develop fully-functional web applications using the MVC design pattern; if you’re not familiar with MVC, read back to Week 7.
Our classes this week focused on testing, which is an important part of being a software developer. In fact, the bootcamp trains us on Test Driven Development (TDD) . This means tests should be written for every small part of a program to ensure developers are constantly checking and refactoring their code. In basic terms, tests are written in three steps: (1) specify what piece of a program you want to test, (2) input data into that part of the program, and (3) enter the data you expect to be the result. For example, let’s say there’s a function/method in our program called ‘Addition’ which adds two numbers together. To test this method, we tell the computer to test the ‘Addition’ method, give it 2 and 2 as our parameters, and tell it we expect a result of 4. If the test fails, we know there’s a mistake somewhere. This seems overly simplistic, but it’s important to understand fundamentals before jumping into a testing framework. Since I’m a .NET developer my primary testing framework is MS Test; a Microsoft product.
There are many styles of tests, but the bootcamp focuses on three major types; unit tests, integration tests and automated tests. At the lowest level, unit tests ensure specific methods or functions in a program return expected results. Then there are integration tests, which allow us to ensure we’ve connected our program to another software successfully; connecting a web application to a database, for example. Finally, we have automated tests which ensure an entire program functions as expected and can be duplicated using automated testing software. It can be extremely labor-intensive to write all of the necessary tests for a program. Testing is such a large part of the development process, most four-person development teams have at least one ‘QA,’ who almost exclusively writes tests.
The automated testing part of the week focused on two testing frameworks called Selenium and Cucumber. Selenium is an automated testing software used to test web applications. Without Selenium, the only way to test web applications is Ad Hoc testing; basically running the application and typing data in yourself. Selenium simulates running your browser and collects results from the web page. Cucumber is a Framework that can be used on top of Selenium to simplify the communication and readability of automated Selenium tests. It uses a plain language called Gherkin, which is as close as computer languages get to plain English; this is called Behavioral Driven Development (BDD). Cucumber allows non-technical people to see the tests that are written and make educated decisions on the project’s functionality.
If you think testing sounds a little bland, you’re not the only one. I’ve yet to meet anybody who loves it, though I’m sure those people are out there. I like to think of tests as another tool in the programmer’s toolbelt. Carpenters say you should “measure twice and cut once,” just as programmers say you should write a test for every method.
As I said earlier, I’ve started work on a ‘passion project.’ This project somewhat aligns with my previous idea of creating a Google Chrome extension which verifies credible news sources.
I’m deeply passionate about politics, and extremely analytical when it comes to social and economic issues. I think educating yourself and making your voice heard is one of the few mediums we have to stand up for the greater good. It scares me how little the average person knows about government. I’m 24, and most people my age have no idea how the separation of power between state and federal government works, let alone who represents them. That’s why I’m creating a website to simplify government for Ohio citizens.
Normally, you would search up to six websites to find out which government representatives speak for you. Once you know who they are, there aren’t resources readily available to help you learn what they do. My site will clear things up for Ohio Citizens by providing a single page that displays all of their representatives and explains what each of them do. I’m also developing a feature that surveys citizens about specific legislative issues and outputs a well-written email that reflects their opinions. They can edit the email then follow a link to the appropriate representative’s contact page, and paste their message. This will break down barriers between the people and their representatives, and will hopefully get more people involved in government.
I’ll keep you posted on my project! Next week we’re learning more about JavaScript by digging into Jquery, and the career search will accelerate. Thanks for reading! If you have any questions find me at joeosterfeld@gmail.com.