Complete Course

Algorithms and Programming for QAs

The part of test automation the framework docs never cover: the JavaScript and the algorithms your specs are actually made of. Parse, compare, deduplicate, retry, and generate data with code you can defend in a review.

~5 hours of content

View Lessons

Course Content

15 comprehensive lessons covering everything you need to know

Introduction

Course Structure

Learn how the course is organized and make the most of the content.

Introduction

Prerequisites

Systems and knowledge required to complete the course. No Docker, and no automation background needed.

Introduction

Getting to know the application under test

Meet the customers app, its table, its JSON API, its nested categories tree, and its deliberately flaky endpoint.

Lesson

Lesson 1

Fork, clone, and run the same spec in both runners

Fork the project, install it, start the app, and watch one helper being driven by Cypress and by Playwright.

JavaScript foundations

Lesson

Lesson 2

Variables and declarations

var, let, and const, scope and hoisting, and why const does not mean immutable in a shared fixture.

Lesson

Lesson 3

Values, types, and truthiness

Primitives versus references, == versus ===, null versus undefined, and why everything read out of the DOM is a string.

Lesson

Lesson 4

Functions, scope, and closures

Declarations versus arrow functions, defaults, rest and spread, higher-order and factory functions, closures, and the Mocha this that arrow functions throw away.

Lesson

Lesson 5

Arrays without loops

map, filter, find, some, every, reduce, and flatMap, applied to one task: turning rendered table rows into data you can question.

Lesson

Lesson 6

Objects, immutability, and safe access

Destructuring, spread, optional chaining, nullish coalescing, and the shared fixture that leaks state between specs.

Asynchronous JavaScript

Lesson

Lesson 7

Promises, async/await, and the event loop

From callbacks to promises to async/await, and why Playwright awaits everything while Cypress awaits nothing.

Lesson

Lesson 8

Errors, timeouts, and retries

try/catch, custom errors, guard clauses, and writing a bounded retry with exponential backoff against a flaky endpoint.

Data structures and complexity

Lesson

Lesson 9

Big O without the maths

Count the work instead of measuring it, and answer the only question a test suite asks: how big does n get?

Lesson

Lesson 10

Maps and Sets versus arrays

Map, Set, and object keys, the quadratic includes() inside a loop, and finding the duplicate hiding behind two spellings.

Lesson

Lesson 11

Strings, parsing, and regular expressions

trim, split, replace, template literals, and a regular expression you can still read next month.

Algorithms in your test code

Lesson

Lesson 12

Recursion and nested data

Base case, recursive case, and when a loop is clearer, applied to the nested categories tree the API returns.

Lesson

Lesson 13

Sorting and comparing

Comparator functions, the default sort() surprise, localeCompare, stability, and proving a sorted column is really sorted.

Lesson

Lesson 14

Comparing two datasets

Reconcile what the UI shows with what the API returned, and report the difference by naming the offending row.

Lesson

Lesson 15

Generating test data

Seeded randomness for reproducible failures, unique values that survive a re-run, and combinations without combinatorial explosion.

Bonus & Conclusion

Bonus

Bonus: coding questions in QA interviews

The exercises QA candidates are actually given, how to talk through one out loud, and what the interviewer is really marking.

Conclusion

Congratulations!

You've completed the Algorithms and Programming for QAs course!