Book: Alan Page – The A word
This post was published on June 10, 2015When not working on testing and test automation myself, I like to read books, articles and blog posts that are related to my profession. One book I have recently finished reading is The A Word by Alan Page. Although it’s more of a collection of revised blog posts from his blog The Angry Weasel than a book, it’s been a very interesting read nonetheless.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with his writing, Alan writes a lot about his experiences with testing and test automation. He is pretty well known for his skeptical view on how a lot of people see automated testing as the solution for everything, especially when it comes to GUI-based test automation. Although I do tend to write regularly about test automation using Selenium, I am not a big advocate of using UI-based test automation tools for all things test automation related myself (see for example this post). Therefore a lot of things covered in The A Word resonated with me and I found it a very pleasant read, although it is rather short at around 70-80 pages.
I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anybody that has anything to do with test automation, as Alan offers valuable food for thought for test engineers, test managers and all others doing or relying on automated tests. It might just make you think about whether you’re doing the right stuff and doing your stuff right..
The A Word is available on LeanPub. All profits go to the American Cancer Society, so that alone should be a reason to pick it up and leave a donation.
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