Yesterday I wrote a bot for Telegram. A much more enjoyable experience than the Jabber bots that the guys and I wrote for fun 9 and 12 years ago. The older bot (in C++) was good because it could load plugins in any programming language on the fly. The younger bot (in Java) was good because it worked without the “Segmentation fault (core dumped)”.
I think a good test task can be built around a bot. Test assignments are a headache, everyone knows that. And here, it seems, is the solution.
The developer can be given the task of writing a bot. After 2 hours, he will have a nice artifact, not a useless shame repository on github.
A tester can be given a bot with bugs and a questionable design solution. It is quite possible to check test design and automation skills beyond CRUD.
The analyst can be asked to describe the current functionality of the bot and describe an improvement. It is quite possible to check whether a person can write and whether a person understands what a function is.
The scope for imagination is limitless. For example, if you’re into pictures, let the bot convert the pictures. If you are doing information security, let the bot encrypt files or explain JWT. Recently I came across a restaurant menu for the first time, designed as a bot on Telegram. The link to the bot was in the QR code on the table. At first I was skeptical, but when I watched a video of steaming borscht with the most detailed information on it, I calmed down. No paper menu could ever dream of doing this, so it’s for the best.
You can even meet the candidate halfway and give him a bot on a topic that interests him. Why not? All brilliant ideas go through the stage of a tiny spark.