Today’s healthcare software QA teams are constantly being asked to do more with less while keeping up with faster release cycles of electronic medical record (EMR) software. While many seek ways to automate testing, breaking into the role of a test automation engineer can be a daunting task. The requirement of mastering multiple languages, testing tools, and frameworks poses a steep learning curve to those who don’t have in-depth coding expertise.
Keysight Eggplant has helped various healthcare organizations, including the NHS, address this challenge with its unique low-code test automation platform, democratizing software testing at scale and enabling business testers to write automation snippets in an English-like scripting language, SenseTalk.
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Doug Simons, the inventor of SenseTalk. During the chat, Simons shared insights into his journey in tech, the inspiration behind SenseTalk, and its potential to democratize EMR testing and power effective collaborations between QA and business testers.
The Origin Story of People-Oriented Programming Language
SenseTalk is a programming language that stands out from the rest due to its people-oriented approach, designed to prioritize human understanding and ease of use.
Doug explains that the fundamental purpose of programming languages is for a person to communicate with a computer and give instructions. However, most languages focus on the computer, such as what the computer does and how it works. He wanted to create a language that would turn this concept around and shift the focus as much as possible toward humans.
Therefore, the philosophy behind SenseTalk is to prioritize what the person wants to do and what they’re trying to accomplish, rather than the technical details of how it is done on the computer.
Key Advantages That Make SenseTalk Stand Out from Other
Doug shares three defining characteristics that make SenseTalk stand out in the realm of low-code programming languages.
Intuitive
With an English-like syntax, SenseTalk allows people without coding backgrounds to accomplish common tasks using familiar terms and phrasing.
Let’s take the example of checking if a quantity is divisible by 3. In SenseTalk, the script is as simple as “if quantity is divisible by 3,” whereas traditional programming languages like C, Java, and Python require you to write “if (quantity % 3) == 0.
One of the major benefits of greater readability is making maintaining test scripts more efficient. As Doug pointed out, “Programmers all know that if you walk away from your code for six months, come back to it later, you’re going, wait, what was I trying to do there? So if you can read it, that’s a big help.”
Figure 1. An automation snippet written in SenseTalk
Task-oriented
Task-oriented focuses on high-level operations, allowing users to focus on what they are trying to do instead of how to do it. For example, if you wanted to sort the lines of a file based on the last word in each line, you can just say “sort the lines of file X, Y, Z by the last word of each.” This actual command in SenseTalk expresses precisely the user’s intention.
Human-centric
Doug describes “human-centric” as being friendly, flexible, and fluid.
First, SenseTalk uses terms and concepts familiar to people, making it easier for beginners to learn the language and think in SenseTalk while working on a problem.
It is also flexible, allowing users to express their intentions in natural and comfortable ways. For instance, some commands support a flexible syntax that enables the order of phrases to be varied.
Lastly, SenseTalk adapts to users’ thinking and interprets commands in a way that best suits their intentions.
Doug shared an interesting incident where a customer needed to work with a number that could sometimes be negative. Unfamiliar with the concept of absolute value, the customer simply instructed SenseTalk to delete the minus sign from the value. To someone with a computer science background, that seems like an odd idea because the minus sign is kind of a text operation, not a numeric operation. However, because of the fluidity of SenseTalk, it just worked. And essentially, what happened was SenseTalk can effectively interpret things the way that the customer was asking for it.
The Future of SenseTalk
Doug mentions that SenseTalk has been around for a long time and has kept growing and evolving.
He values user feedback, as it frequently sparks enhancements that tackle the day-to-day challenges faced by users.
Moving forward, Doug is dedicated to making SenseTalk, even more people-oriented, intuitive, and user-friendly. Ultimately, his vision is for software testing professionals to not only achieve success in automation using SenseTalk, but also to genuinely enjoy the experience, just as he enjoys creating it.
In case you missed it, catch up on this on-demand fireside chat with Doug Simons to learn about the impact of low-code test automation in healthcare, best practices in SenseTalk, and more.
