During the summer of 2013, I was the Performance Engineering intern at Wizards of the Coast, the West coast branch of Hasbro and maker of Magic: the Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. I performed in this internship under the mentorship of Ernie Nelson (Senior SDET, Customer Engagement Systems) and Sheryl Shulman (Computer Science Professor at The Evergreen State College).
According to the job description:
“Performance Engineering is an internship designed to expose the student to real-world experience as a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET). The student will work alongside an experienced SDET at Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro) to build new performance test automation, maintain existing automation, execute performance tests and analyze test results.”
This blog chronicles my experiences. See the following links to check out what I did in any particular week:
- Week 1 – Getting My Feet Wet
- Week 2 – Web Performance Fever
- Week 3 – Lessons Learned
- Week 4 – Swag Bag Fever
- Week 5 – Databasics
- Week 6 – Loads of Load Testing
- Week 7 – Web Test Whack-a-Mole
- Week 8 – WCF Heavyweight Championship
- Week 9 – Saving the Environment
- Week 10 – Loads More Load Testing
- Week 11 – Back to Baselines
- Week 12 – Fond Farewells… and Cake!
I learned a ton about all aspects of software testing, focusing on engineering automation and performance tests within a .NET-heavy environment. Just seeing how real-world software teams work was invaluable, and will positively shape the start of my career moving forward.
During the course of my internship, in addition to software & performance testing, I also received experience & training in:
- Using Visual Studio
- Basic C# programming
- Writing & executing simple SQL queries for data retrieval
- Agile/Scrum methodologies
- Source control (Perforce)
- Installing new builds
- Service Oriented Architecture principles
- Software troubleshooting
I supported & reinforced my learning using the following texts:
- Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction (Johnson & Sims)
- How Google Tests Software (Whittaker, Arbon and Carollo)
- Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2010 (Gousset)
- Service Oriented Architecture for Dummies (Hurwitz)
- .NET Performance Testing and Optimization: The Complete Guide (Glavich & Farrell)
- Practical Load Balancing: Ride the Performance Tiger (Membrey, Hows & Plugge)
- Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics (Clifton)
Overall, it was a fantastic summer and I am grateful to Ernie Nelson, Sherri Shulman, and Wizards of the Coast for the opportunity.
