Someone recently suggested to me that the selection of VBScript for an automation language is because it’s easier for testers. This is slightly rant-y, but I promise there are a few helpful tips in here just to make up for a mild dose of language-warring.<\/p>\n
Exhibit A.<\/b><\/p>\n
I can understand that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chance that a tester (if they came from a business role) might have some familiarity with VBScript as a result of writing office macros, but really…<\/p>\n
Which would you rather write (and read)?<\/p>\n
\nDim newList
\nnewListNextItem = 0
\n
\nFor i=1 to ubound(list)
\n Redim newList(newListNextItem)
\n newList(newListSize) = list(i).getROProperty(\u00e2\u20ac\u0153text\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)
\n newListNextItem = newListNextItem+1
\nNext i
\n<\/pre>\n\nOR<\/p>\n
\nlist.each do | item |
\n newList.push item.text
\nend
\n<\/pre>\nOf course, you can<\/i> (and probably should) implement your own class to do something like the above. Below is how things might look if do.<\/p>\n
\nSet newList = new dynamicList
\nwhile list.hasNextItem do
\n newList.add(list.nextItem)
\nend while
\n<\/pre>\nYou will, however, quickly encounter the issue detailed in exhibit C.<\/p>\n
Exhibit B.<\/b><\/p>\n
Is it easier to have to change the way that you assign a variable based upon the type of the thing being assigned?<\/p>\n
\na=\"Fred\"
\nSet b=New Fred
\nc=a
\nSet c=b
\n<\/code><\/p>\nOR<\/p>\n
\na=\"Fred\"
\nb=Fred.new
\nc=a
\nc=b
\n<\/code><\/p>\nThe net effect of this is to have functions which need to be aware of exactly what kind of thing they are returning, then have them do this:<\/p>\n
\nIf isObject(a) then
\n Set functionReturnValue = a
\nElse
\n FunctionReturnValue = a
\nEnd if
\n<\/pre>\nExhibit C.<\/b><\/p>\n
We include a reference to file B from file A<\/p>\n
File A contains:<\/p>\n
\nSet a = New a
\n<\/code><\/p>\nFile B contains:<\/p>\n
\nClass A
\nEnd Class
\n<\/code><\/p>\nFor some reason this doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work, so just to check, we try a different method to include our Class definition. Now we are told that the class already exists.<\/p>\n
But wait, if you somehow thought to create a special factory function to give you an instance of the class, it all works.<\/p>\n
So now we change File B to:<\/p>\n
\nFunction newA
\n Set newA = New A
\nEnd Function
\n
\nClass A
\nEnd Class
\n<\/pre>\nNow why didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I think of that?<\/p>\n
Rant off. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be working with different languages and tools for a while now\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6But do we really have to suffer this as testers? I’ve never spent so much time in a debugger, ever. Productivity tool? I leave that to you to decide.<\/p>\n
And in case you didn’t read this the first time around, discover the joys of Visual Basic over here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/adamv.com\/dev\/articles\/hatevbs\/vbscript<\/a>
\nTerry Horwath has also done some further investigation of the namespace issue (Exhibit C) over at SQA Forums<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Someone recently suggested to me that the selection of VBScript for an automation language is because it’s easier for testers. This is slightly rant-y, but I promise there are a few helpful tips in here just to make up for a mild dose of language-warring. Exhibit A. I can understand that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a chance that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,30,34,36],"tags":[130,88],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ruby","category-software-testing","category-test-automation","category-test-tools","tag-ruby","tag-vbscript"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.software-testing.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}