In the last post it is detailed out what tools are needed and what languages and other nifty things to know. Over the last three months since Christmas I have been studying, and still are studying those items because I think they are all needed to be able to be effective in the world of Test Automation with Selenium. Now this post will be about knowing java well enough to be effective in your test automation (using Selenium), I am not trying to become a java developer just yet and doubt it will ever come to that but who knows.
So about Java, one of the most popular programming languages in my region at the moment. For the use of Selenium, we at least need to know how to use the tools, how to set up a dev environment and how the workings of Java are so that we can run tests in it.
First set up your tools, download the following installers and run them:
Java JDK Here you go and pick the JDK. The link is a bit more generic to make it future proof so while at the time of writing one would pick version 8 JDK, it could be version 9 or 10 or whatever in the future.
Eclipse. Same as above, pick the Enterprise Edition although the naming might change in the future.Eclipse doesn't do installers, you will get a zip file that you will need to unzip to some drive and then go to that folder and click eclipse.exe. I would suggest you pin it to your taskbar right away to prevent future searching. The lack of installers is so you can have multiple instances of Eclipse on your dev machine, the reasons for that are beyond me in their complexity (I am not advanced enough to understand).
IntelliJ Community Edition. An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) just as Eclipse, used more than Eclipse although in my region it seems clients rather have you use Eclipse for the reason of the absence of licensing costs. The Community Edition is free (as in beer) as well, as long as you don't make money with it, which is fine for now.
You will also need to set the PATH in your computer to the JDK so your IDE can use it. There are some instructions here halfway the page.It is entirely possible you need some more step by step hand holding, this is nothing to be ashamed of as I needed it myself when I just started in January. For that you go here. This is the first of a series of video's that we will be moving to in a bit as they are very useful although a bit time consuming in my opinion.
So now that our own personal computer is set up to be a java development environment, we can start to learn! Yay!
These are the resources that I have found helped me most when making my first baby steps on the path of Java development.
First I watched some of the video's from The New Boston, a guy who holds your hand through writing simple java stuff and all in Eclipse. Be ready to pause quite a few times to do the same yourself. While his steps are easy to follow, he explains little in the theory of the concepts. Also, it is easy to follow but where to go for exercise after you watched his 10 minute long tutorials?
You got to Codecademy of course! This will have quite the overlap with the above Youtuber but much more hands on, you will be writing your own code some 5 minutes into visiting the website. Very helpful to get the basics in your head. I would say you can jump to Codecademy after a few video's from the New Boston, if you want to be more active instead of just listening.
In my timeline it now is about the end of January, with work and life getting in the way all the time, I don't have full days to spend on this, a few hours here and there is about it. This does however gives my brain the time to wrap around the concepts presented and I am ready to go deeper into the understanding of Java and writing some actual code.
For deeper understanding, I bought the book Head First Java. Got it from the local craigslist for 15 bucks, send to my house as well. If you want it faster, hit up amazon or something similar. I got the real book, actual paper, dead tree, you know what I mean. It is bulky and takes up space but it is always ready and lying open where I left it. You can download illegal (or legal!) pdf's all you want, nothing beats an actual book for reading is what I think.
Okee, so I did basic exercises with Codecademy, know how to use Eclipse and write some code thanks to The New Boston and I read up on the first few chapters of Head First Java. Now I want to write code, dammit! If you are anything like me, you will have no idea what to write. Some people can think of tons of challenges they set to themselves on what they want to do but I had no idea.
This is when I discovered code challenge websites:
Kattis. You can actually find me here, my score is small but growing.
Hackerrank is similar to Kattis.
Project Euler This is one I find referenced to often online, not using it myself. If I run out of easy problems on Kattis, I will likely try this one.
CodeKata. Also has a cat, seems developers are cat people?
Topcoder comes across as being for advanced coders. Not sure, just put it on my shortlist for the future.
The best thing I have found about coding challenge websites is that you encounter problems, you google for a way to do it, end up on StackExchange and you try some more solutions. Also I am discovering that if you read more from the book, thinking up a solution for more complex problems is easier as you know more ways to do something in Java.
Seems easy, right? Being about three months deep into this Test Automation Adventure, I am pleased with the gradual progress and the steep learning curves are really only in the beginning where you will have to step away from the fear of code.
Next post will be about Selenium in Java, how to set it up and what I did to learn and use it.
No comments:
Post a Comment