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Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

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Re: Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

#71

Post by jnathsf »

Like many startups we've struggled with velocity vs quality doing the standard unit test for each PR and full regression tests for bigger changes. But it's never really worked well.

Ran into a blog post by Rainforest's CEO [1] that really resonated with me on why the status quo in testing is broken (it's all about misalignment of incentives).

My team did a bake off and Rainforest was the clear winner. What Rainforest has built is a big technical achievement and they make it look so easy! We're just getting started with them but we have high hopes that we can better balance velocity and quality.

[1]https://www.rainforestqa.com/blog/accessible-quality

Re: Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

#72

Post by ukd1 »

jnathsf wrote: post #71

Like many startups we've struggled with velocity vs quality doing the standard unit test for each PR and full regression tests for bigger changes. But it's never really worked well. Ran into a blog post by Rainforest's CEO [1] that really resonated with me on why the status quo in testing is broken (it's all about misalignment of incentives). My team did a bake off and Rainforest was the clear winner. What Rainforest…

Thanks, and glad we won that bakeoff! Shout if we can help y'all out.

Re: Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

#74

Post by sumedh »

franciscassel wrote: post #46
nhoughto wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, no-code seems to optimize for a large number of people being somewhat effective, but with less control over the output (increasing fragility, rework) Code is more upfront effort but more control and thus less fragility but more maintainable over time (if done right). I imagine there are some/many situations where throwing many people at a problem is the “best” way and this would suit that quite well I guess.

In my experience, many orgs that work with Selenium and its derivatives have described that (coded) approach as flaky / brittle (i.e., fragile). Of course, until automation gets to be as clever of humans, any test automation approach is going to have some flavor of brittleness.

You should try out Cypress, its really good and its just works out of the box.

Re: Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

#75

Post by maciejgryka »

polskibus wrote: post #73

Are you testing Rainforest UI with Rainforest? If not when do you think it will be possible to do (for majority of your views let's say)?

Yes, we are dogfooding pretty hard! We release a bunch of times a day and every release goes through a suite of >130 Rainforest tests for regression. We also add tests for every new feature we release, so it keeps growing.

It was a cool thing to write tests for testing the test writing interface :) That's one "level deep" - out of curiosity I was playing with how deep it's possible to go and it turned out at 7 levels things get too small to really make sense (terminal within a terminal within a terminal etc.), but there's no inherent limit.

And we can do this because we work on the pixel level - even though the terminal is a canvas element and it'd be hard/impossible to work with it using the DOM, it doesn't really matter for KVM.

Re: Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

#77

Post by ZepZa »

maciejgryka wrote: post #75
polskibus wrote: post #73

Are you testing Rainforest UI with Rainforest? If not when do you think it will be possible to do (for majority of your views let's say)?

Yes, we are dogfooding pretty hard! We release a bunch of times a day and every release goes through a suite of >130 Rainforest tests for regression. We also add tests for every new feature we release, so it keeps growing. It was a cool thing to write tests for testing the test writing interface :) That's one "level deep" - out of curiosity I was playing with how deep it's possible to go and it turned out at 7 levels…

Do you test the new user path? Tried to create a free account with email, didn't get an email. Tried to register with GitHub, authorized rainforest in git, still can't log in. Maybe someone in my organization already tried the free account or something but as a user I get no info at all. Just a unusable login page that looks like it needs some CI testing ;)

Re: Launch HN: Rainforest QA (YC S12) – No-Code UI Test Automation

#78

Post by maciejgryka »

ZepZa wrote: post #77
maciejgryka wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are dogfooding pretty hard! We release a bunch of times a day and every release goes through a suite of >130 Rainforest tests for regression. We also add tests for every new feature we release, so it keeps growing. It was a cool thing to write tests for testing the test writing interface :) That's one "level deep" - out of curiosity I was playing with how deep it's possible to go and it turned out at 7 levels…

Do you test the new user path? Tried to create a free account with email, didn't get an email. Tried to register with GitHub, authorized rainforest in git, still can't log in. Maybe someone in my organization already tried the free account or something but as a user I get no info at all. Just a unusable login page that looks like it needs some CI testing ;)

For sure, that's weird - email support@rainforestqa.com and we'll sort you out.
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