Caltrops - Still Life





	[quote name="Entropy Stew"][quote name="Fullofkittens"]Okay, at my current job I am getting into automated software testing, using Quicktest Professional. My org basically asked me which automated testing tool to buy, and I told them QTP, and now they've got me training people how to use it and shit like that. I like the tool - everyone else at my org complains nonstop about it but I really enjoy working with it. BUT: now there seems to be an opportunity for me to change organizations. This is good, because as we all know I hate my job, and the new org is a lot more interesting than a boring old insurance company. The bad thing about it is that part of what is attractive about me as a candidate is that I have ideas about automated testing... but this new organization doesn't have money lying around for stuff like $10,000 automated testing tools. I would like to start bringing automated testing to my new job(?) and I think they would be receptive to the idea if I had a plan for a way to do it affordably. So here's the question: which tree should I be barking up for automated testing? Keep in mind that I am as technically literate as the music major you have all come to know and love. I can do basic scripting shit but I am no programmer. There's off-the-shelf tools that I could use but, having used one, they really seem like a fancy housing for scripts that you end up writing in an existing language anyway. In my travels, I have encountered suggestions for Perl, Python, and Ruby (as scripting languages) - I liked the look of Python up until I found out that it got its name from MONTY Python >:(. There's also off-the-shelf stuff like Wintask (as well as more expensive stuff) but they all seem to be platform-dependent and the company I'm interviewing with is very excited about Mac compatibility being their next big feature. Eggplant is the one exception I've seen but the only good reviews of it I saw were written by its developers. So, if you had to start scripting applications for Windows and Mac, what would you use? And could I learn it? If you were ME, what would you learn?[/quote] Languages: Learn python first - it's probably the easiest of the three, is much cleaner than Perl, and not being tricky is an explicit design philosophy of the language. I prefer ruby, as it is the cleanest of the three, and I work with perl on a day-to-day basis, which means that I can't recommend it. Testing platforms: <a href="http://www.froglogic.com/pg?id=Home">I found this googling. No idea if it's good.</a> On apple, though, you could throw together a powerful ad hoc test platform off of <a href="http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/automation.html">Automator</a> (it didn't seem to have its own page) and <a href="http://www.apple.com/applescript/">Applescript</a>, both of which come with the system. Really, this isn't an area I'm familiar with since I do web development and testing that requires entirely different tools. -/ES/-[/quote]