Where do you learn about new tools?

Hi folks,

I’m focusing on tools and I want to ask the community this:

Where do you learn about new tools?

I use a lot of different sources which I plan to share, but I’d like to know where you learn about tools. Sharing sources with new learners is going to open their options for what tools to play with, which can only be a good thing. So reply with where you find tools and why you use that source.

And, as always, we are grateful for your contribution :robot:

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Either someone mentioned the new tools or from Google when I am searching for a specific need.

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You guys are a good source of impartial advice and I also like Joe Colantonio’s channel. I guess everyone ends up on the same guru99 and softwaretestinghelp lists when they look up tools - their ‘top 20’ lists at least give an idea of what is out there but are pretty light on detail i find

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Google is thy friend for me. It will either lead me to online platforms with tutorials; from Youtube to Udemy. Sometimes Documentation of a framework is great.

If I’m trying to learn a new tool/framework, I’ve got an assignment for myself which touches upon X amount of things in automation as a challenge. So I’ll most likely be challenged to google on how to do X or Y in a tool. Learning from blogs/forum posts/video’s this way.

Sometimes I would like to learn something new in a classroom training. But I’m mostly making the trainings about tools sooo :stuck_out_tongue:

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Dev.to newsletter for IDE addons and JavaScript libraries

ProductHunt.com for newly released tools

https://javascriptweekly.com/ - For my Javascript Library/tooling, adding this later, just got the email and learned something new today.

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Often I hear (or read) about new tools that could be interesting to me on either the service formerly known as Twitter or Mastodon, but on conferences and Slack, too.

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Thank you all for sharing your different sources. Lots of different avenues to explore. We’ll be adding some of your suggestions into our Learning journey and linking them back to your Club account.

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In addition to the above, I’ve also been to conferences/ listened to talks where new tools are introduced. Our engineering manager also shows a lot of interest in shiny new things so lets us know of new tools that way.
An additional way is to be involved in other slack channels (such as the a11y channel) in which people provide additional ideas for testing/ automation. The below have come out of this.

  • Bruno (API testing)
  • X-Ray
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I learn about new tools from Recruiters on LinkedIn sometimes. I see job posts all the time with something like “Must be proficient in FlipFlap with TippyTaps using Flunk”.

Then I’ll have to Google it and start learning it :smiley:

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I think you must mean Flutter

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Test Guild and MoT are both go to resources. I also tend to keep an eye on tools reccomended by people I admire and follow on linkedin. If they mention a tool, I will google and
dig into it.

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Here’s my list of generic sources for information:

  • Slack Channels (eg Indie Testing Community, AgileTD Zone, Playwright, Cucumber, Selenium, …)
  • Work (talk to your colleagues, and/ or use appropriate channels in your work Slack/ Teams)
  • GitHub: Specifically follow other testers, look at their repos, where they’re contributing, what repos they’ve stared
  • ChatGPT (using the v4 more and more over the last months, and it’s pretty good (3 and 3.5 are crap imho))
  • Meetups, eg meetup.com
  • Social Media (LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, the-platform-we-don’t-use anymore)
  • Conference Talks
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What I generated from my ten minutes:

List of other sources:

  • Tech Radars - I really like the Thoughtworks tech radar, its not only testing tools, but new technologies that can enhance your testing (infra as code, alerting etc) - Technology Radar | An opinionated guide to today's technology landscape | Thoughtworks
  • Internal Tech Radars - you can do your own for testing, or check if there is an existing one at your company.
  • InfoQ/O’Reilly - these tend to have tool updates amongst other news, good for fitting tools into technology stacks, rather than isolated.
  • Your local user groups - not so many of these around nowadays but some still exist. Can be good for finding out the ‘warts and all’ version of a tool from someone who has actually implemented it.
  • Recruiters - I know, this is a bit leftfield but you can often ask recruiters what tools are in demand at the moment, might give you a hint beyond your own company/research range.
  • Books - I’ve got a number of books which talk about testing patterns and tools. I liked ‘Way of the Web Tester’ which talks about tools in context. The Way of the Web Tester: A Beginner's Guide to Automating Tests by Jonathan Rasmusson
  • Previous experience of those within your company - most people came from somewhere else, so can be good to ask what tools they previously used for similar problems. Next to be careful though, as nostalgia about tools can be dangerous.
  • Following people on Wordpress - I like this one, as I get sent the blog as soon as its published.
  • Software Testing Notes - alternative to complement Software Testing Weekly. I find both of these help to provide a wide view of the latest content.
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I love Bruno. Postman suffers from being difficult to source control (one big file), Bruno has its problems but source control is a massive bonus.

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I have acquired new tools from various online platforms and communities devoted to software development and technology. Additionally, I consistently use Software Testing blogs, forums, and social media channels related to software development and testing, which serve as excellent resources for discovering new tools and technologies.

My main sources include:

  • GitHub
  • Stack Overflow
  • Product Hunt

Furthermore, I delve into online learning platforms like Coursera, Udemy, and edX. These platforms offer courses and resources covering the latest tools and technologies in software development.

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While not directly involved in tooling as automation as almost all coding for me, I do like to at least try to keep an eye on things, mainly with from the Club here.

I think I follow along some of the other methods mentioned above

  • LinkedIn - kudos to @brownie490 , never thought to make use of recruiters, mainly because they clog up my spam folder

  • Colleagues - Developers and other QAs, even Product people sometimes.

  • StackOverflow - a timeless friend

  • Google and lately, Co-Pilot

I also follow a number of people on LinkedIn and YouTube, but that is mainly for .Net/c# snippets

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Google, producthunt, codeproject, github, dev.to …

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Google is your friend. You can search for information given by tool vendors or find information in blogposts where people share there experiences. But there also some other ways.

  • Meetups
    Get in touch with other visitors and ask them what kind of tools they use for automation.
  • Ask you colleagues
    This you can do as you work as an consultant. When you start a new assignment and you have the possibility to do a tool selection, you can ask your colleagues for a quick first impression
  • Conferences
    When you visit a testing conference, for sure there are tool vendors. You can get in touch with them. Also meet with some people who are at the conference, perhaps have the same challenges as you have.
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Others have covered it but Googling, what used to be Twitter, reddit, co-workers, conferences