A Code Challenge of Confidence - Elisabeth Hocke

Talk Description

“This is scaring me as hell - and that’s exactly why I need to do it!” Can you relate to that? This year, my personal challenge was to become code-confident. As a tester, I felt the need to up my game here. My hypothesis: “I believe that doing many small hands-on coding exercises and challenges, on my own as well as together with other interested people, will result in increased confidence in my programming skills. I’ll know I have succeeded when I have developed a small product from scratch.”

What I did was to finally use my GitHub account and create my very first public repository. I called for collaboration and found people willing to review my code and to pair up with me on further challenges. Rinse and repeat! The question to be answered: was jumping headfirst a viable way to improve my coding skills?

Join me on this walk through my code - along with the stories of my struggles, the solutions found, and the lessons learned.

Takeaways

• Understand why honing our skills is essential for us as testers
• Learn how scary challenges can help you grow in short time when you have people who support you
• See how pairing speeds up your learning journey and make more things possible than you would have ever imagined

What you’ll learn

By the end of this talk, you'll be able to: