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Crowdsourcing JavaScript Testing 41

Posted by timothy from the isn't-that-what-slashdot-is-for dept.
snitch writes "John Resig, creator of the jQuery JavaScript library, has released Test Swarm, a platform for distributed continuous integration testing for client-side JavaScript. Frustrated with traditional JavaScript testing environments that don't scale, John's new project, which is currently in private alpha, aims to provide a system for outsourcing browser-related testing to large groups of people or communities."
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Crowdsourcing JavaScript Testing More

Crowdsourcing JavaScript Testing

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  • Crowdsourcing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @06:38PM (#27321803)
    Crowdsourcing is a bad buzzword that combines the worst of both betas and open source. Far too often "crowdsourcing" is "we want you to find all our bugs for us while we do nothing". By crowdsourcing something you doom it to a perpetual beta while usually not making it fully OSS so it can be really transformed and used.
    • Resig never uses that term himself, TFA added it by himself, possibly to make it buzzword compliant.

      In this instance, the tool itself is open source and it's being used to unit test an open source JS library. jQuery itself is quite a good library that's very actively developed with an active community.

  • Trendsourcing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrEricSir ( 398214 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @06:43PM (#27321897) Homepage

    Def. trendsource
    -verb: to solve problems using popular buzzwords

    ("The developers trendsourced the project by integrating crowdsourcing with Agile methodologies automated with a SOAP communication layer.")

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Put it in the cloud and we will have a new paradigm.

    • Re:Trendsourcing (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jurily ( 900488 ) <jurily AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @07:00PM (#27322185)

      ("The developers trendsourced the project by integrating crowdsourcing with Agile methodologies automated with a SOAP communication layer.")

      Translation: they got posted on /. and now they're putting out the fire in the server room.

      • SOAP? Do Not Want! (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        >> ("The developers trendsourced the project by integrating crowdsourcing with Agile methodologies automated with a SOAP communication layer.")

        > Translation: they got posted on /. and now they're putting out the fire in the server room.

        Not true! Real Slashdotters avoid SOAP like the plague!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aminion ( 896851 )
      ("The developers trendsourced the project by integrating crowdsourcing with Agile methodologies automated with a SOAP communication layer.") Sounds very interesting! But can't we get XML-RPC?! SOAP is such a bloated piece of crap.

    • It's only buzz if you use it that way.

      I can develop an app to crowdsource movie recommendations using Agile methodologies and heavy automation with SOAP communication between layers.

      If I wrote a few paragraphs concerning this project these words would have far more meaning within the context of the description. This is a valid use of the word "crowdsourcing," because it's within the context of a real project and it communicates a real concept.

    • Re:Trendsourcing (Score:5, Funny)

      by gandhi_2 ( 1108023 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @11:06PM (#27324771) Homepage
      The folksomonie's synergistic frision brings a best-in-breed game-changer to the clowns-as-a-service paradigm.
  • While this sounds like a cool idea, I think the problem is being exaggerated slightly. The suggestion is that doing 1200 tests per commit doesn't scale is simply not true. In general necessary to run the tests for every commit, if commit N passes, and commit N+5 passes, it really doesn't seem necessary to check the ones inbetween. We run a lot more than 1200 tests on 3 operating systems and one dual-core computer with VMs is more than enough to keep up.

    • Yeah, but when N+100 fails, and they are all related, oops. Just don't wait to put in the tough stuff until the end of the project, I suppose! How do you do a binary search with 1200 tests?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )

        You don't binary search the tests, you binary search the releases. If you run the tests every 10 checkins, you then do a binary search finding which checkin broke it. It's definitely possible to do. Although I think in practice it wouldn't work- too much stuff gets broken in interim checkins in any decent sized project, much of it so minor you don't really care or thats not worth fixing right now.

  • Crowdsource this! (Score:3, Funny)

    by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @06:56PM (#27322127)

    If I have to bear witness to another buzzword in a slashdot article title, I will turn Richard Stallman into a Juicer and ship him in a crate to Slashdot HQ. Because nothing says mega-damage like a character from RIFTS. I swear I will. He's already half-way there. You've seen his code, you know he's already got a caffeine drip. It won't be hard. Plus, I'm kinda bloated and cranky right now, so I might just come with. Don't tempt me.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by syousef ( 465911 )

      If I have to bear witness to another buzzword in a slashdot article title, I will turn Richard Stallman into a Juicer and ship him in a crate to Slashdot HQ. Because nothing says mega-damage like a character from RIFTS. I swear I will. He's already half-way there. You've seen his code, you know he's already got a caffeine drip. It won't be hard. Plus, I'm kinda bloated and cranky right now, so I might just come with. Don't tempt me

      PMS fueled tantrum about slashdot buzzword usage, threatening to use RMS as a

  • Coincidentally... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @07:02PM (#27322197)

    I happen to be working on "A system for euphemising poor coding practices using the latest buzzwords". It'll be awesome!

    Seriously, who needs a "crowd" at all? There are only a handful of popular browsers. They'd be much better off running tests in-house until they feel their code is rock solid.

    From TFA:

    100 tests in 12 browsers run on every commit by a human is just insane.

    And uploading your code to a public server on every commit and twiddling your thumbs waiting for good samaritans to randomly log in with various browsers and test it for you is...sane?

    • Re:Coincidentally... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dynedain ( 141758 ) <slashdot2&anthonymclin,com> on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @07:22PM (#27322491) Homepage

      There may only be a handful of browsers, but that doesn't mean there are only a handful of test cases. When it comes to javascript, there are quite a few variations that can cause problems beyond just the browser name.

      One example that I've been specifically dealing with on MooTools involves bugs relating to font antialiasing on Internet Explorer. The issue presents itself on IE 7 when system font smoothing is enabled, but NOT on IE6 or IE8. Furthermore, in only presents itself if the user utilizes "Cleartype" (recommended for LCDs) but not if they use Standard font smoothing. It took me quite some time to narrow down exactly where the problem was.

      This isn't an issue on Firefox 2,3, Safari 2,3 (although other kinds of font issues may arise with FF on OSX, and with Safari on Windows). Counting the variations of system settings, major OS and browser versions, that makes for 51 test cases, not including point versions of the OS or browsers, beta versions, and limiting it to the big 3 of browsers.

      • Re:Coincidentally... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Dynedain ( 141758 ) <slashdot2&anthonymclin,com> on Tuesday March 24, 2009 @07:36PM (#27322685) Homepage

        Correction, 40 test cases:

        Firefox 2,3 on WinXP,WinVista * 3 system font smoothing settings
        Firefox 2,3 on OSX
        Safari 2,3 on Win2K,WinXP,WinVista,OSX
        IE 6, FF 2,3, on Win2k
        IE 6 on WinXP * 3 system font smoothing settings
        IE 7,8 on WinXP,WinVista * 3 system font smoothing settings

        And of course other issues will have larger sets of test cases. I'm able to narrow it down here because Safari has its own font smoothing that is unaffected by which version of Windows it is running on or what the system font smoothing is set to, and Win2k doesn't have any native font smoothing.

    • I happen to be working on "A system for euphemising poor coding practices using the latest buzzwords".

      Please get a business method patent on it and enforce it vigorously and aggressively!

  • Javascript 1.5 (aka ECMAScript ECMA-262 Edition 3) is what most developers target for good reason. [statowl.com] But there are supersets found primarily in Gecko based browsers. But then you throw in the various DOM quirks between browsers and before you know it, programming anything large in Javascript that will be used across a wide variety of browsers can really start to suck due to minor quirks between different implementations. It will be interesting to see how their test cases support/address layout issues, if t

  • Eitherway, it's a better buzzword than crowdsourcing.

  • It's called Google Beta.

  • Damnit!

    "... which is currently is private ..."

    "... to provide a systems for ..."

    Is this how little you care about those you're writing for, that you can't even be bothered to read it yourself?!? Do you write code like this? How do you manage to get it past a compiler?

    This is *so* lazy, and *so* simple to eliminate. Don't post if you can't be bothered to proofread, and no, a Spellchecker is not an adequate substitute.

    You're publishing your thoughts to the world. Think!

    I see we have a "typo" tag; may I su

  • private alpha

    In other words, this is just a puff piece for something that may not even exist.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by acidrainx ( 806006 )
      Knowing John Resig, I doubt this is vaporware. He's come up with some really amazing stuff and is constantly posting interesting JavaScript tidbits and information for developing real production code on his blog [ejohn.org].
  • Want to get a lot of people to test your Javascript? Call it version one and release it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by syousef ( 465911 )

      Want to get a lot of people to test your Javascript? Call it version one and release it.

      Sergey Brin, is that you??? No wait you said version one not version one beta. Never mind.

  • More importantly. (Score:2, Informative)

    by dex.pdx ( 923011 )
    Before jumping into some gauntlet of distributed (or aggregated or what ever you want to call it) JavaScript testing. Shouldn't there be a FOSS [cross]platform for unit testing JavaScript under multiple "rendering kits/engines" that can be plugged into Rake, TAP or Nose or any other unit testing harness.
    For most applications things like Selenium are more trouble or cost to much money then they are worth. I would like to see something that would allow me to test my JS code across multiple browsers with a

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