Things the average person doesn’t know about software development
There are many things that an average person doesn’t know about software development and there is nothing wrong in it. Software development might seem like a team of people endlessly banging their keyboard, however it is much more organized and many of the things are automated.
Here are a few things that an average person doesn’t know about software development:
Automated Testing
Before software is deployed into production, automated testing verifies that it functions properly and meets all criteria. Automated testing tools conduct inspections of software, provide reports, and compare results to those obtained during previous test runs.
Automated tests may be used for a wide variety of purposes, including unit, API, and regression testing. The primary advantage of automated software testing is that it condenses as much manual work as possible into a collection of scripts. For instance, if unit testing consumes a significant portion of the resources of a quality assurance (QA) team, this process should be assessed as a candidate for automation.
As a result, the majority of testing managers regard automated software testing to be a critical component of a successful software development project. For a long time, many software firms have made automated software testing a requirement for their employees. As test automation services have become more cheap, businesses of all sizes are using them to reduce the length of time it takes to complete testing cycles. It is also necessary from a wider perspective as it results in faster advancements in a overall young software industry.
This is occurring largely due to the fact that manual testing for the majority of workflows and fields is both expensive and time-consuming. Companies must personally analyze and assess many sites that are considerably different from one another, which is highly tough and complex.
Automated Testing Techniques
Automated testing may be performed in a variety of methods. The following are some of the most often used methods by automation testing professionals.
Functional Evaluation
Functional testing, as the name implies, is concerned with the functionality of programs. As a result, testers must determine if an application’s fundamental functionalities are operating properly during functional testing.
Smoke Testing
Smoke testing has numerous distinguishing characteristics that set it apart from other forms of testing. As a result, we must comprehend these characteristics in order to grasp the foundations of smoke testing.
It is sometimes referred to as Build Verification Testing, in which the build is validated by testing critical application features and then forwarded to the next level of testing based on the test findings. Test automation is ideal for automating the execution of various types of tests.
Compatibility Testing
Compatibility testing is a subset of test automation that focuses on the application’s non-functional features. As the name implies, this method verifies that software is compatible with certain software, network, and hardware requirements.
Regression Testing
Regression testing is used to determine and confirm whether a recent software update or code change has harmed or not the existing functionalities. Due to the fact that regression tests are generally repetitive and need partial or whole re-execution, automated testing is the most efficient method of executing them.
Automated Deployment
It is possible to move software between testing and production environments with the help of deployment automation, which uses pre-defined methods. Repeatable and dependable deployments throughout the software delivery cycle are the result of this approach.
Release new features and applications more often and efficiently using deployment automation, while eliminating the need for human intervention in application deployments.
The advantages of automation in deployment
The following are the primary advantages of deployment automation:
- Reduce lead time by eliminating time spent setting up environments and doing manual testing.
- Eliminate issues quicker, discover more complicated bugs, and shorten developers’ code feedback loops.
- Avoid repeated activities such as environment setup and be able to spin up the environment required to test the product without opening a ticket with DevOps, freeing up the DevOps team for other work.
- Increased accuracy due to deployment automation automating all stages.
How do software developers plan for traffic spikes?
Traffic spikes are a blessing in disguise. If you don’t prepare for it in advance then you are sure to lose both in terms of brand value and money. Software developers use various ways to predict traffic spikes. Some might analyze previous years data and prepare for it while some of might use machine learning models to predict the traffic spikes. With their predicted data they get in the process of adding resources and also making it resilient to hacking. There are various ways they do it like compressing resources like images, css files, js files, upgrade to servers with better hardware, use Content Network Delivery (CDN), and lastly update website’s code to make it more lightweight.
Software Development is a complex and an ever-changing field. It is also due to the fact that the software industry is a young industry and we are still figuring out our ways. Significant changes have been made in the past few years especially with the automation, and artificial intelligence taking the center stage of the software industry.
We hope you enjoyed my article on what the average person doesn’t know about software development. If you are interested in learning more, contact me! I am an open book.
Matthew J Fitzgerald is an experienced DevOps engineer, Company Founder, Author, and Programmer. He Founded Fitzgerald Tech Solutions and several other startups. He enjoys playing in his homelab, gardening, playing the drums, rooting for Chicago and Purdue sports, and hanging out with friends.