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I think we need to start with things like, what are you passionate about? What do you feel like you know decently well? What kind of unique perspective do you have on a technology or on a process or on a practice that you care about? Right? Because that then becomes your inner voice. And when you have that inner voice, the problem is not getting the content out. The problem is getting it to shut up. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about Python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Valdebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. All right. Welcome back to another Pie Bytes podcast episode. This is Julian, and I'm not here with Bob. Very sad, but very happy. He's sleeping. So I'm going to enjoy this podcast episode, but not by myself. Today, I have a very, very special friend and guest on the podcast, Andy Knight. Andy, do you want to say hi? Hello, everyone. Welcome to the podcast, man. Before we get started into the conversation, let's just run who you are. Aside from my friend and person that I've had quite a few beers with at Pycons over the years, why don't you introduce yourself, tell everyone who you are and what you're about. Sure thing, man. So, my name is Andy Knight. I am the automation panda. I'm a software engineer test who builds solutions to testing problems. If you're on Twitter, hit me up at automationpanda. Also write a blog@automationpanda.com, dot. I've known Julian for over three years. Can you believe that? We met at Pycon 2018? I'm actually wearing the shirt today. In fact, Julian was one of the first awesome people I really got to know within the Python community. So it's great to be here to be on this podcast. I've been in the software industry for over a decade now. I typically focus on software development and test roles, so I'm looking at automation tooling, helping teams achieve success with their quality goals, all that kind of stuff. Cool. No, that's awesome, man. Three years. I can't believe it's been three years. I remember the. If you ever see Andy or I on the street or at a convention, ask us about it. We just got randomly chatting at, I think, Mike Kennedy's talk. Python booth. Who knew we'd be on a podcast together one day? I know. Cheers. Yeah. Cheers, man. So Andy has a beer, and I've got a coffee. It's not fair, but we're in different time zones. It's okay.

Yeah. Yeah. It's 09: 2:50

00 a.m. Where he is and nine p. Wow. Kidding. You're kidding. Yeah. So, look, Andy, thanks for joining me. One of the things I love to do on the podcast is, you know, we have our technical outlets here with pie bites. We have the YouTube. We have the YouTube. Sound like an old man, the YouTube. We have the blog. We have all sorts of stuff. But one of my favorite things to do on this is to talk to people about their journey, about how they got to where they are. And because, you know, with you, you are this prominent figure now in the testing space. People look at you. You know, you said you've got keynote things coming up. You've delivered. I can't even. I've lost count now. I was counting at one point. So many talks. I remember when we first met, you hadn't done one yet, and you were nervous about it. We chatted about it over Skype a couple of times, and now you're just so good at it. It's just your thing. You love doing it. You're getting invited to events. It's really cool. And I love the journey that you took here. It's not something. And excuse me if this sounds a bit rude. It's not something special, because at the end of the day, you weren't just. It wasn't some luck thing. It's not something that just fell into your lap. This is. It all happened based on your action, right? You did a few things to get yourself to a point where you're now seen as a bit of a. As a SME in testing. You know, I know you've been on Brian Okins podcast a few times now. I love listening to those episodes and the debate. I think it's fantastic. You know, you. You're doing all of that. You're talking. People just see you as this. This figure in the testing space. So just to dive into this, what was, I guess, when we met and you and you to. I think you were new to the python scene in general. Yeah, completely. So how did you go from there to your first big hurdle? What was that first big hurdle, and how did you tackle it? Geez. I guess the. The big hurdle that. Wow, I can't even. Word's good now. I'm sorry if I'm thinking about a big hurdle, of what got me to kind of be on my trajectory where I am now. It actually happened about a year and a half before Pycon 2018. So a little bit of backstory, me, I live in the US. I graduated from college in 2010. I got my degree in computer science. I had known since high school I was going to be doing programming and stuff. And from graduation until late 2016, I had been on a path of trying to become a better software engineer. I have worked at a couple different companies. I ended up in test automation as a specialty where I landed, I'm like, I'm going to make this the best thing ever, right? And so working at IBM, then NetApp, then a company called Maxpoint, I was becoming a better individual software engineer. And I was cutting my teeth in my companies. I was being told I was doing a good job. And what I found is that I really liked what I was doing. I found there was a lot of opportunity in that space. I felt it was underserved because a lot of the stuff I was seeing had a lot of opportunity, I'll just put it that way. And so I was like, I can do a good job here and make an impact. But all that was basically locked behind company doors. Right? And I think a lot of people in our industry are kind of like that. Right. I would say, like, 99% of the amazing work people do is dark in that we don't see it as a community. Right. People do things because, you know, they're their company, they're working their nine to five. It's all proprietary stuff, and we just don't, we don't see it. And it doesn't mean it's not there, doesn't mean it's not excellent. It's just, you know, it's behind the scenes. Right. And a lot of people don't even think that maybe there's a way that they could try to share that either, for whatever reasons. And so I was kind of, like, in that mold of like, I'm going to try to. I'm pursuing senior level engineer because I think I can do that. I want to be the best I can be. And I finally achieved a senior level position October 2016 when I got a job offer from a company called LexisNexis. And so I was like, I have arrived. I met my goal. I am senior software engineer in test. This is great. I'm going to do awesome things at LexisNexis. And I guess I did. But within a week of getting that job offer, it was like, okay, now what? Yep. Right? I hit this pinnacle. I hadn't really thought about what was beyond that other than push code deliver value, make money. But it's like, oh, what's going to be, like, the next big arc then, for my career? And while I was working at LexisNexis, one of my coworkers was none other than Angie Jones, who, if y'all don't know Angie Jones, look her up. She is now, like the queen of testing and automation. She's like, she has broken out of the testing. She's just a tech superstar. Yeah, but back then, she was my coworker, you know? That's great. And even at that point, she was. She was kind of on her trajectory to the moon and beyond. She had started getting lots of speaking engagements and all this stuff. And so I met Angie, and I kind of saw the things that she was doing. She was writing a blog, she was on Twitter, she's speaking at events. And I was thinking, oh, wow, maybe I could do that, because I have opinions on things regarding testing and automation and quality, deeply held opinions that I've honed over the past six years. And I feel like I have something worth saying because I see a lot of people not doing things that I think are good or things that I think could be improved. And I had this burning passion of a voice inside of me saying, I want to be able to share this. And I saw the example of people like Angie Jones, specifically her to begin with. But then once my view brought it, and I saw other individuals doing this kind of thing as well, and I was like, oh, I could try to do that. And so it was, if there was a hurdle there, it wasn't a technical hurdle. I think it was a mental one. It was realizing that there was more to be accomplished and setting my mind to go do it right. Yep. And so that it was December of 2016 was when I registered the domain name automationpanda.com dot. Right. And then my first articles I pushed out to that blog were in January of 2017. And I blogged up a fury, man. And I got pittance for views. I think, like in the first half a year, the first half of 2020, 2017, I think I probably had no more than 1000 views total on all my articles. And I was pushing them in. I was doing like one a week, at least, like I was, you know, so success does not necessarily mean hits. I want to put that out there as well. For me, I was judging success on my blog as I'm satisfied with the content that I'm putting out there, because I know it's good. I know I can refer to it myself, and if I ever, if it ever comes up in conversation or something at work, I know I can share these and trust these because I wrote them. This is my thought going onto paper into written format in a storable way that I can call upon in the future. And if other people want to look at it and use it. Cool. And the more I do this, the more my blog becomes my electronic business card. That was the first thing of let me try the blog, because, Angie blogs, I can blog. I see other people out there blogging, too. And so 2017 became, for me, the year of the blog. I put out tons of articles that year, probably more than any other year. Like, I don't do as much on the blog as I used to. I mean, I'm more diversified of my content now portfolio, right. But back then, it was exclusively blogged. That's all I did. Nobody knew me. I came up with the name automation panda because I thought it would be catchy, because there's too many Andrew Knights in the world. Nobody's going to remember Andrew Knight, but everybody gonna remember that crazy panda kid, right? That's. Yeah, that's a good way of doing it. Yeah. Nice. And so then I just, I started blogging. And by halfway through the year, I think, I don't know what it was, but my articles started getting more traction. Like, I saw these, these massive spikes in views. I went from, like, you know, 100 views a month to like, 500 views a month. What? That's weird, you know? And it went from there. The first real sense of validation for me came in October of 2017. So one year after the whole mind expansion moment, jump over the hurdle moment, I remember it very distinctly. I had people reach out to my blog who said, andy, we love your content. Can you come to our company and give us training? We'll pay you money. That's. And I was like, what? I mean, I had to get on, meet up with one of my friends here in Raleigh for lunch because he does independent consulting. I had to be like, how do I do this? How do I be a consultant? And, dude. So this company, it was up in Washington, DC. It was a very, very large financial company. I way, way undercharged for what I could have milked them for. Oh, my gosh. I look back on like, I blew it. Like, in terms of, like, the money I could have made, I blew it. But it was my first independent consulting opportunity as the automation panda, and I pulled it off. Three days of training. Java test automation. Oh, my gosh, that was brutal. One day of in person training. But anyway, for me, that was huge validation to show this track this contents. This thing I'm doing is working something somewhere. It is, it is delivering value to people. It is propelling my career forward. And like, this is completely unexpected. I didn't go into this, into blogging, thinking, I'm going to make money off of this. Like, to this day, I have a strict policy of no guest posting and no ads. Right? Just because it's like, this is my blog, right? This is my content. I want to focus on the content. I know so many people I talk to, they're like, I want to start a blog, and I'm going to get ads for everything. Off of that, I'm just like, good luck. You'll make pennies on the month. Okay, cool. But that was never my thought. My thought was the blog was supposed to be high quality content for, for me and my pleasure and secondarily for other people. And all of a sudden, now, other people, within a year, people are waving dollar bills in my face saying, yes, we love you, Andy. And I'm like, what? Like, so, so that's really jumped. That's a really important point I think I want to jump into quickly because a lot of the people that we talk to and talk with, you know, that they don't have that. There's a confidence piece missing. And I love that you mentioned that you had these opinions on things that you were seeing and you wanted to share that. And so many people have those opinions as they're going through learning, you know, learning Python, whatever track they want to go down, data science, you know, whatever, right? But as they form these opinions on how they see how it should be going, thoughts and things that have happened on libraries that exist, whatever it is, there is this fear of this impostor syndrome of I'm not good enough to even have an opinion on this. Sure. You know, why? Who am I to be writing an article saying, oh, I think, you know, I think pie test is rubbish. Sorry, Brian, right in the heart. But, you know, if someone had that opinion, you know, they, they would feel like, I don't have the. Who am I to be doing this, to be writing this down, you know, and that's an extreme example. But the point I'm trying to get to here is you had this, this essence of confidence to say, I'm just going to do it. And I think one. And this is the same approach that Bob and I took because I didn't actually know this, by the way. This is all new to me, so I didn't know that because that's the same approach bob and I took in, that we said, well, if it helps someone, great, but the purpose of us writing this blog is for us. It's for us to have this as a resource. It's for us to get our thoughts down on paper, so that if I ever need to remember how to set up a virtual environment, I know where it is now. I don't have to look through a boatload of notes. It's all in the blog. I didn't know that either. That's awesome. Yeah. And then the opportunities just come in, right? As people search it, share it, gets posted on a website, whatever else. But I guess my message for everyone listening is that don't be afraid of just putting your ideas and thoughts down. You know, that no one's saying you have to write the best a grade content ever, because no one ever writes that. And if you do write, it's been peer tested by ten people, it's taken six to twelve months, it may as well be a book. But the idea is just to beat that confidence hurdle of just writing something down and just putting it out there. And if you get, as you were saying, and you get one viewer a day, that's fine. You know, if I remember the first time someone commented on, commented on a post saying, thank you so much, this really helped me. It was like six to eight months after I wrote it. But just knowing that it helped someone really, really made my day. All right, so I'll stop going on there. I'll move on to the next thing I wanted to ask you about, which was, so you're. At this point, you know, you've. You've got the blog, you're seeing some success with it, you're excited, right, at the possibilities. Your mind's probably going a million miles an hour. How did you end up at Pycon? And then from there might be a bit of a story to link that up. I know. So many. I'm going to try so many. Yeah, but. But also, you know, to get into. To overcome the hurdles, then that came after that, to start speaking. So I'm going to stop talking. I'm just going to hand the mic over to you. So go for it. There's actually, I would say, two major tracks to answer the question of how did I end up at Pycon. One was the continuation from the blog. Like I said, 2017 for me was year of the blog. I got it out there. I validated success in that. People out there found it so valuable, they wanted. I landed my first consulting game. So I was like, wow. So then, just like I had thought a year before, I was like, what's next? Work is going good. I'm doing the senior engineer job. I've got this blog that's growing now. Cool, what's next? Then I look to folks like Angie Jones and company, and I see they're speaking at conferences. I was like, oh, maybe I can do that, too. Then I was thinking, all right, I have never really done this before. I don't even know what conferences are out there where I should be speaking, if there's a lot, if there's a little. So by the end of 2017, mentally, in my mind, I had set a goal for myself. And my goal was, I am definitely going to attend a conference in 2018. I'm going to go to one. I'm going to be part of it. I'm going to see what it's like. I'm going to learn. I didn't know what to expect, but I was like, I'm going to do this. And my stretch goal was, maybe I can, excuse me, land a speaking opportunity at a conference. Because again, I didn't know, like, how, how I would be able to land that or anything. It was just like, stretch goal, you know, if I don't make it, okay. But I definitely at least want to get my foot in the door to figure this thing out. So I had, I had that in my mind. So that that was kind of the one track. And so I, what do I do? I go to Google testing conferences, software conferences, what's out there? And so I find a couple. There was a cucumber conference for behavior driven development. I submitted to that, and then I was like, you know, I like Python. Maybe I should look for python conferences. And so that's where the second track comes in, because peeling back those layers, I had done Python first time in high school, way back when, I was like, wow, this is cool. Graduated, never touched it again until about 2015. The company I was working at did C sharp, Java and Python, and they hired me to do testing and automation. And so I picked up Python again. So, yeah, I remember a little bit of this. And I found out very quickly that Python is awesome for test automation. I mean, it's awesome in general, but it was awesome for test automation. I was like, so I rekindled a love there. In fact, that company was a top level sponsor for a PI data conference in 2016 where I live. And they sent out the call for papers throughout the entire company. And so I was like, hey, I'll submit a testing talk. Testing in Python is fun. Something where I was going to give a survey of different test frameworks in Python. I got to speak at that one because my company got me in the door. So that was technically the first Python conference I spoke at, but at that time, I wasn't in the community, if you know what I mean. It was more of just like, oh, my company's here. Let me go speak at this. I dressed up in a suit to give a talk about tech companies. Like, this is how out of touch I was. Anyway, that had. But anyway, this whole thing had kind of rekindled my interest in Python. And it was about that time that my wife, small businesses needed some help, and so I developed a Django application to help them with some of their orders and stuff. So I been even more hands on in Python. NIce. And so now back to late 2017, I'm thinking, what conferences would I want to attend? PytHON was whispering in my ear, like, oh, yeah, I love Python. I think Python's great. I even did a python conference before and that was really cool. So python conference, google what comes up. Pycon. I was like, oh, I have about a month to get a proposal in. So I put a proposal out there and I'm like, okay, cool. I didn't realize how hard it is to get an acceptance from Pycon. I just got accepted and I was like, oh, cool, I guess I'm going to Pycon. It was just like, boom. I didn't realize how big of a deal this was or that it would become. And so, yeah, I mean, it was trial by fire, man. And so, like, I'm expecting, when I go to Pycon, I'm expecting like that little PI data conference, like two to 300 people, you know, all under one big tent. And you go to Cleveland and you're just like, oh, we're at the convention center downtown. Oh, this would be fun. And then you see like 3000 people and you're like, oh. And you go up on stage and you realize you're speaking to a ballroom of like a thousand people. And you're like, oh. And then you realize that they're giving away so much swag, you need another suitcase to bring it home. I need people like you, you know? And it's like all these amazing things are happening to be a pycon. Like, I mean, it was, it was life changing, dude. And so, like, Pycon as a singular event, you know, like, you know, getting senior was great. Getting the blog was awesome. But then speaking at Pycon, I mean, it was just like, like the hockey stick moment, man. It's just after that, because there was so much inspiration. There were so many awesome things going on. I met so many great people. You know, I got all these signed books, I got all these t shirts and pairs of socks. But it was like, wow, this is incredible. Like, what have I been missing out on for the past eight years, you know? And it was, it was simply the awesomeness of that experience that propelled me to continue speaking because I wanted to continue speaking selfishly so I could justify going to more of these events because it was fun, it was encouraging, it was edifying, it was mind blowing. And so, like, I mean, I learned, I remember, like, at, at Pycon 2018, one of my biggest takeaways was like, there are other frameworks than Django for web. Oh, let me go learn about flask. And to the point where I'm actually writing a book on software testing now. One of the examples, I'm, I wrote a flask app to demonstrate the thing. So it's like, boom, you know? And I learned about that first at Pycon 2018. So, yeah, I mean, cool, man. That's cool. Now, that's a really great story. And I love the, again, there's that confidence piece, you know, I mean, I remember our conversation. You were telling me you were there alone. You know, I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, if I had shown, like, I'd shown up to Pycon with Bob. And yes, it was the first time I was meeting Bob, too, in 2018. So. But still, I had a friend there. I knew Mike Kennedy was going to be there. So I had a few people I knew to go and reach out to, but I can't even imagine tackling the conference alone. So there's that confidence piece. And you were of presenting, but, okay, so all these amazing things you were doing, especially at the conference with the talks and just putting yourself out there, the consistent theme here is just that. And actually, because we're recording this, I don't have a title for this podcast episode, but I am actually going to use the word, the saying that you've said multiple times now, what next? Because I really love that theme of, it's like we, Bob and I constantly say, you know, new levels, new devils. So every time you hit a new level, you reach a new plateau. You can either continue the plateau or you can say, what's next? And keep pushing. Right? And that's something that you kept doing. You said, okay, what's next? A pycon a python talk. And that was your PI data talk. Then what's next? Oh, Pycon. That's going to be slightly bigger, but probably the same. Nope, it was huge. And then what next? You know, meeting people, collaborating with people and just sharing. And these are all actionable things that anyone can do, you know, because you weren't just hiding away in a corner. You came up to us and you just said, hey, how's it going? I'm Andy. I said, hey, Andy, how are you, man? Welcome. My first pike on here. What about you? You know, and we just. I remember we stepped aside and ended up chatting for like an hour. Yeah, it was awesome. Yeah, it was really good. But these are things that it doesn't take a lot to do in the sense that it's not like we did an email exchange and organized a meeting over Zoom and all things like that. No, this was just showing up to, showing up, going there, having that confidence hit. So for anyone who is inspired by this story, and I hope everyone is, to just not necessarily get out there and create content, because I don't want to set that expectation that to be successful with Python, you have to create content, but rather you have to build, whether it's the apps, build relationships, just talk with people, share. By the way, I did love that you built a Django app for your wife. That's cool, man, because we're always talking about building. What's advice that you would give to someone who is just on the precipice of saying, you know, I have stuff to say, I want to do more in this space, but I just don't have the confidence. What's something you would tell them? Find your passion. Right? When. When it comes to the world of software, you can go in so many different directions. I've heard a lot of people say, oh, I want to write a blog, or I want to get into speaking. And that's a good goal, but I think we need to reorder the goals. I think we need to start with things like, what are you passionate about? What do you feel like, you know decently well? What kind of unique perspective do you have on a technology or on a process or in a practice that you care about? Right? Because that then becomes your inner voice. And when you have that inner voice, the problem is not getting the content out. The problem is getting it to shut up. The problem is being able to focus it and hone it and be sharp and concise and to optimize your communication of it. So, like, for me, my passions were things like python, things like behavior driven development, things like good testing and good automation. I can't shut up about these things because they're what I'm passionate about. And my struggle, like I said, is like, finding the time to be able to put good articles out or to come up with good conference talks about these kinds of things. I mean, there's a reason why, like, oh, Andy, he gives the token testing talk at all the python conferences. I'm just known for that. Why? Because it's. That's my thing, you know? And so for folks who are kind of looking and thinking about that, I would say, find that passion. What are you passionate about? And then just do it. You know, there's. There's going to be all sorts of little micro frictions. Things like you're busy, things like you've got family and work and house and who knows what else, you know, time tax. You've also got the struggle of trying to break into whatever type of medium you're trying to put content into, whether that's just engaging certain community groups, whether it's the python community at large, or maybe you're into security and you have a little security meetup in your backyard or something, whether that's if you're writing articles or writing books or making videos, you know, you know you're going to eventually find the content that you like to make or the ways in which you like to get that out. It could even be like you start a mentoring program at your company. It doesn't even need to be something public or open or anything right there. There are going to be opportunities that find you. What I would say is, be open and ready for them. Overcome those little micro frictions. If you're introverted, it's okay. Do your best to kind of try to step over that. Like, when I went to Pycon, I was nervous. I was afraid I wasn't going to meet anybody, and I was just like, you know what? Darn it, I'm just going to get over that. I'm just going to talk to people and see what happens. And if I don't make any friends at the end of it, oh, well, at least I spoke, right? But I made some friends, and it was awesome. I made so many friends, I kept going back. So, like, getting over those little emotional hurdles and mental hurdles to. To kind of pursue those greater things is also very important. You combine those things together, Ben, you're going to be unstoppable. It's just going to be a matter of time. Exactly. And that's a couple of key points there as well. I mean, one right there is. It takes time. You're talking about starting this journey in 2017. That's like four years ago now. So these are not things that happen overnight. So there is that consistency and persistence there. But one thing that you really hit the nail on the head is that you don't have to just create content, you know, and I've said that already in this recording, but just do something in your realms of comfort to start with. So, yeah, most of us tend to be comfortable with our teams at work. Most of us tend to be comfortable with our friends, you know? So in that space, do something small, even if it is just, hey, if you have a passion for python, take a mate who wants to know a bit more about it and do some book a call every Friday and just have a chat. Like, I mean, there's a woman in our. In our PDM program, Michelle, who has a. I think it's weekly or fortnightly call every Friday with a friend to go through the hundred days of code. Nice. They just code it together. You know, this is how you can start small to build some confidence. And on the other note that you said, you know, you're talking about that, the time tax, right? We have our daily responsibilities that are non negotiable. It might, you know, the family, the job and all of that. So one of the key things here is to grow in this space. It is going to need some sacrifice. But to your original point, which was find the passion, that sacrifice does not feel like a sacrifice when you're doing the thing that you are truly passionate about. So I love that you said, reshuffle the priorities here. If the goal is a blog, well, then you're going to burn out much quicker because you're just forcing a blog to happen in existence or forcing to talk for no particular reason that you're passionate about. But if you have a story to tell, no matter how big or small, you know, in fact, I remember one of the guys we met at Pycon, Andy, that we hung out with, Jason. Good old Jason. Yeah, I know. Same, same. And so, Jason, if you're listening, we love you, man. He gave a lightning talk. I think those are like, what, five minutes, right? Yeah, he gave a lightning talk on just his journey into the python world with python and meeting people like us and everything. And it was just such a small step, but a huge step at the same time. And it was so awesome to see. I mean, I couldn't be there for it. So he sent me the recording. It was amazing. But the thing is, it doesn't feel like a sacrifice, but you are giving up. Certain other things that you realize along this journey aren't as important. So if you are passionate about learning python and growing your career in it, it doesn't make sense to sit there and say, I just binge watched all of. What's Bob watching at the moment? Madman. Sorry. Well, no, but, you know, this is. We have our guilty pleasure. I'm watching the expanse at the moment. But, you know, instead of binge watching seven episodes a night, you know, I'm much more happier working on my passion here with pie bytes and talking with people like you and so on. So, man, so many valuable lessons there. I really, really love it and appreciate it. So I do want to. I do want to ask this question for everyone listening before we close it off. One, what's next? You've mentioned a book, so tell us a bit more about that. But also, outside of python and testing, you know, what do you find joy in doing? So start with a book and move on to the second one. Go for it, dude. Okay, so I've had, since the early days of my blog, a desire to write a book, and specifically a book about software testing. Gosh, I even think I brought this up to you at Icon 2018. Like, I think that was one of the things we talked about. Because the way I see a software book, regardless of what the topic is, it is the collective thought of the author in depth on a subject. That's why I don't think software books are passe. I still have a ton of books on my shelves. I learned by reading books. And so I wanted to, at some point, attempt writing content in that medium, because a blog article is going to be very short, and I can have idea that's kind of small. But in a book, I can have a comprehensive treatise on the subject of my choosing. And I'm very passionate about software testing. That's probably the major arc of my career and my expertise. And so part of the impetus with that as well is that there aren't a whole lot of good books on software testing today. At large. What you find are books on individual frameworks, like Brian Aachen. We love to mention him. He's got the Pytest book. Excellent. But that is very narrowly focused. It is. How do you use this particular framework in this particular language? Or you may see books on certain kinds of testing techniques or types, like unit testing or exploratory testing. Nobody has written the software testing book for about 20 years. In fact, I was adjunct professor at a community college two years ago, teaching a basic python software testing course. Yeah, the book we use, guess what year the copyright was? 2002, because that was the best we could find. And this is a, like, university system, like trying to find books and stuff. So I'm like, somebody needs to write this book. I think I can write this book, and I think I have enough passion to carry me through, no matter how painful it's going to be. So it had been kind of like an on off idea. I ran through about five different sets of outlines. In fact, I was actually in talks with O'Reilly about two years ago, but there were some changes within O'Reilly where that didn't drop off. Ultimately, as of December of 2022, 20, I am under contract with manning publications. Yep. The working title of the book is the way to test software, and it is meant to be the software testing book for our generation. It's meant to walk through what is software testing? Why do we do it? What are the major kinds of tests? Everything from, like, you know, functional testing, performance testing, the different layers of the pyramid. Heavy focus on automation, of course, because I'm kind of the other panda, right. But I also believe in an automation first testing strategy. And so I'm excited about this book, but, man, it is tough to write. It is tough to write. And like, all the other commitments in my life, too. I mean, I still write the blog. I still do the speaking. I'm doing more speaking than ever because, oh, it's just virtual. It's easy now, right? Oh, my gosh. Right. I'm at a different company than when I was initially starting the blog. So now I have even more responsibilities professionally. But it's, it's going to be a slow process. I've completed five chapters. They're fairly hefty. I have about, gosh, like 12, 13, 14 more to go. The book is going to be enormous. That's cool. Yeah. Right now, the current chapter I'm writing is on testing web services. In fact, it was so big, I'm splitting it into two chapters, parts one and two. I've developed a flask app, and I'm going to show, like, how do you, you know, how do you use authentication? How do you, how should you structure your tests for different calls? What are response codes you look for? How do you chain things together for crud operations? You know? So it's going to be hefty detail in here, too. It's not just a, like, glossing of the subject. Oh man, that is cool. So firstly, congratulations. That is incredible. Because I know you've been wanting to this for a year. I think last time we it caught up over Skype, you were talking about it like, this is what I'm going to do. This is what's happening. But you hadn't had the Manning deal, so that's amazing, man. Congrats. I'm really happy and proud. Well, I will say soon, I hope. It should enter Manning's early access program. So for anyone out there who's interested, keep your eyes on that. What that program does is it lets you get the chapters basically as soon as I drop them and my editor gives them enough of an okay. So you'll kind of get to see the book evolve as it goes. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. If you have links for that as they come, I can always update this episode description with that. So we'll keep it on the website and stuff. Oh, man, I'd love to. This is. I'm very excited about this. And at the same time, I'm excited about Brian's version two. Oh yeah. Python testing with Pytest coming out second edition soon. All right, so to wrap it up to quickly tell us what's something outside of Python testing and all that stuff that you love to do and where can people hear more about you? I mean, you mentioned the blog. Just go through it all again. Why not? Sure. Sure. So I'll start with the what do I like to do outside of being the automation panda? I mean, I'm not gonna lie, there ain't much time, but I do enjoy video games. I'm a big Nintendo fanboy, as you know, julian. In fact, everybody, right before Julian and I hopped on this podcast, we were talking about games. I had mentioned recently, I'm playing a game called Hollow Knight. Excellent game. Slow build, very rewarding. So, yeah, there's another recommendation. Other than video games. Historically, I've liked to cook. I enjoy good food, but I don't get to cook as much anymore, which. Sad, but is what it is. My wife and I like to renovate houses. Yes, I love those. Yep, yep. She has the vision, I have the muscle. So, like, we completely renovated the house where her mom lives. So that's quote unquote fun. In fact, we're getting windows in next month, so that'll be like the final big project there. That's cool. And one final thing there is recently I bought a vintage Volkswagen Beetle. Oh, yes. I love the photos of that. Very cool. It is a. Thank you it is a 1970. It is in beautiful condition. But dude, I tell you what I owned it for. I bought it from some guy out, you know, out in the country. Two weeks of driving it, the engine blew up, like bad, like, so, trial by fire. I'm now learning how to take care of this classic car. I've ordered an entirely new turnkey engine. Spent way too much money on this. It's going to come, hopefully next month. It's going to drop the old one out, put the new one in. I'm doing other little or restorations to it as well. Like, I'm going to change out the exhaust system, the heater boxes. I'm spray painting the exhaust system black. I'm spray painting the heater box is red. So it's going to have a really nice pop underneath the body. That's cool. Hopefully within a couple months, I'm going to redo the entire interior, get new upholstery carpet, get a new shifter knob. I learned how to drive stick on this thing, so now I know how to drive a manual car. Yeah. So now that, like that, that Beatle is going to be a good project for the rest of my life. So that is cool. More to do. I love it, man. Very handy, very hands on. Try handy. And he strikes again. I like it. I didn't even think of that. I'm ashamed. So, just a quick recap. Where can people come and find you if they are keen? And I imagine everyone is after hearing you talk? Oh, dude. Well, I would be honored. And I'll also shout out, I love random conversations with random people, as long as they're polite. Thankfully I don't have too many haters, but best place to reach me is Twitter automationpanda. I'm there every day. I'm tweeting stuff. I'm active in the, in that space. I find Twitter's actually pretty good for keeping in touch with community. You know, people I don't get to see in person all the time, like people like yourself and all, you know, from around the world. Great way to keep up. You can read my blog, automationpanda.com. That's where I put a lot of my textual content. If you want to see anything, any of my talks that are recorded, automationpana.com speaking. Too many, too many talks. And if you want to check out any of my courses that I've developed online, they're all going to be on testing and automation. You can go to test automation university. They're all free, right? I don't charge. Well, I mean the pro every. All of test automation university is free. Nobody charges there. That's kind of the vision of it. But not just me, but there's like tons of other world class teachers. So if you want to learn anything about testing and automation, test automation university tau cool. Okay, we'll have all the links to those below the in the show notes. So thanks, man, I really, really appreciate it, and it's just, it's really cool. I could never have imagined that this is the conversation we'd be having, what, three, three years later, you know, after meeting randomly. So thanks so much for coming to join us. Thanks for sharing so much of your story and all the pro tips and just inspiration. I really appreciate it. And yeah, anything else you want to add before we drop? Well, I just want to say thanks to you, Mister Julian. It's been a pleasure. And I guess just to everybody, stay safe out there. Beautiful. All right, thanks Andy and everyone. We will be back next week. It'll probably be back to myself and Bob. I apologize, you'll have to listen to us ramble, but yeah, you take care, enjoy, and see you next time. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is Pibit es friends and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show. And to join our thriving slack community of python programmers, go to Pibytes community, that's Pybiton es community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.