MOT Bloggers Club October 2022

Testing tricks and treats

I’m sure I’m forgetting dozens of useful tips, but here’s a few that fit the theme.

Laptop security trickery

My favorite harmless office tricks, are around people leaving their machines unlocked. Working in offices being a thing of the past for some, myself included. It’s important to keep machines secure, and nothing changes behavior like your peers having some fun at your expense.

So what happened if you left your machine unlocked and unattended?

  • People sent silly messages from your machine in private channels
  • Your background picture was changed
  • Your mouse sensitivity, buttons, and inversion where messed up

All little things that you could easily resolve. But mildly annoying, and a learning moment.

CLI goodness

I like using CLI over a UI interface in most cases. Sure I can use the built in Git tools, but I know how to use a command line, and thats a happy place. Doesn’t mean we can’t improve that a little…

That experience got even better when I learned a few things:

  • CTRL + R to search your history, rather than hit the “up arrow” for hours trying to find “that command I ran”
  • Creating aliases in your shell profile (.zshrc or equivalent) to save on typing
  • Lots of env var exports in the shell profile, again to save time.

Online editors

Sometimes you need a proper IDE to get the experience you want. Other times you just need to write some words down, or check out some data.

I like to use online tools for those lightweight tasks, if I’m not already in my editor. For example JSON validators / formatters. Recently I used the Specflow Gherkin editor, to get a few scenarios written down. Having a few options to get the job done is always nice.