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We're really excited about tackling those problems. @mgc and I founded Spotbot with the thought that models trained with ML techniques can be immensely useful
by jmtulloss 11y ago
We're really excited about tackling those problems.
@mgc and I founded Spotbot with the thought that models trained with ML techniques can be immensely useful to developers (novel, I know). So much of coding, debugging, and firefighting is pattern matching, and machines are getting really good at pattern matching. That's how we're going to tackle the user login and dynamic data issues in the long term.
We have some short term solutions in the works as well.
For dynamic content, we'll have a way to ignore changes that are expected and don't mean anything significant changed.
For login, we may implement a token API that will allow us to log in with a bit of work on the developer's side. We can also script logins without too much effort if we are provided with test account credentials.
Thanks for giving me an opening to talk about all this :)
- giovannibajo1 11y agoMy app is a social network. A social network means that the two most important pages (global stream and user stream) continuously mutate because there is always new user-generated content. Now, humans are very good at catching bugs there; if a the name of the user goes above the avatar picture next to it, humans will see it immediately. But how can a tool like Spotbot not to be confused by all the normal changes in user-generated content, and to just spot structural differences?
- jmtulloss 11y agoRight now we're not great at it. However, the way Spotbot works means that we will be decent at it soon. We do a hash of the structure, so we know exactly what kind of changes there are. For something like your page, the image sources, the text, the names, the votes, and other content change all the time. Soon we'll have a way to ignore those changes while still recognizing that other changes need to be vetted. So, for instance, if the padding between the avatar and the user's status changes, we'll still catch that even though we're ignoring the avatar source and the text content. Soon!
- giovannibajo1 11y agoThanks! I'm a little hesitant because it sounds a little like magic, but I'm happy to help with testing it, should you need testers. Any place I can subscribe for updates?
- manyxcxi 11y agoCouldn't you point it at a test environment that would be loaded up with non-changing content so that UI only changes could be tested against the same data always?
- baddox 11y agoYou could create a page which uses as much of the real production code paths as possible, but which returns the same "stories" every time. It takes a little dev work, of course, but it would almost certainly be worth it.