"♫ Anything you can do, I can do better ♪ I can do anything better than you. ♫"

[elfs]

Until circumstances change, this will just be the most horrible geek tease you can imagine.

At the office, we have exactly three approved programming languanges: C for performance, Python for everything else, and a begrudging tolerance for ECMA-262 for the WebUI team and site design. (Although the docs deployment people get away with PHP, which annoys me to absolutely no end.)

The problem has been that unit testing the WebUI has been more or less impossible in a systematic way in a language that QA has been required to learn. The most useful of all WebUI unit testing frameworks is FireWatir, Firefox Web Application Testing In Ruby. It's a nifty framework; it talks to a Firefox (or Mozilla) instance over a telnet socket opened up in firefox's backside (oh, baby, talk dirty to me!).

But it's written in Ruby, dammit. I don't want to have to teach my QA team another programming language.

Therefore, the solution was completely obvious: rewrite FireWatir in Python.

I'm not saying I've done this. I won't even talk about what I have done. But for programmers fluent in Python, Ruby, and Javascript, who are comfortable with network programming and can successfully build Mozilla by hand, it won't take more than 24 straight hours (not "a day," mind you but a 24-hour work cycle) to port the entire project to Python.

If someone did such a thing, though, what would they call it?

Comments

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

Snakewatir, of course.

Or PyreWatir.

*duck*

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Speaking as one who is not a geek (except to those who aren't sure where the power button is on the computer and who are afraid of the mouse) ... I'd name it Whiskey.

Or possibly Snake Oil since it's (hypothetically) a Python app. But that's just me.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

You're a geek, hon. You're an apps geek, but you're a geek. You can probably make Office sit up and beg and do backflips... and you know how to communicate with other types of geeks. Highly valuable skills, not available in stores.

Snake Oil. A hypothetical Python app. See, you get it. It's *precisely* the sort of inside tongue-in-cheek-ness a dev geek would commit.

Whiskey would just be begging for a Tango Firefox to get added, and that would be just a bit much, though. :) :) :)

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

*snickers*

Or, maybe call it Moccasin or Cottonmouth?

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Naaah, that leaves the impression that it'll bite you in the butt when you least expect it. Snake Oil is the right impression... lot of smoke and mirrors. One can always change project names when the ethereal nature changes... after all, it's a time-honored tradition that one has a "code name" for a project first, and then a "real name" when it goes live, no? :)

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

[Watir] Snakes on a Flaym

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

oh, dear. This could get profane real fast. :)

[solarbird]

Since pythons have been known to eat small pigs, I would suggest FireTapir. However, pythons and tapirs live on different continents, so if you care about that, I suppose you could use FireBoar, But that's not as close a match.

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

I had thought the same thing: Firefox Test Application, Python-Implemented Revision.

[solarbird]

Ship it.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Annie Get Your Gun FTW!

[dossy.livejournal.com]

"But it's written in Ruby, dammit."

Have you examined Selenium yet?

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I really can't see why you would call it anything but "FireWatip".

Following logical naming conventions is important!

Why are all these people talking about snakes? And planes? I mean WATIP does seem to be a navaid near Vermont, but that's a bit tenuous.

:)