Perfunctory is common. There are better alternatives. — With Git’s Pull Request feature, many so-called ‘Agile’ teams introduced a formal code review process. While a “PR review” process might sound good (in theory), it often turned out to have little value for too much effort. In my opinion, not worth it. There are other much simpler and more…

Selenium is the best web automation framework, better than others in every aspect. Everyone who failed with Selenium I met was a fake automated tester. — I have seen many articles/posts with lies about Selenium WebDriver, the best web automation framework. Lisa Crispin, the author of the classic Agile Testing book, observed that too, and those bad sales/marketing people made her “so angry”.

Come on, be a software testing engineer, do test as an end-user would. API Testing is very limited, compared to end-to-end (via UI) test automation. If doing properly, end-to-end (via UI) test automation is not that hard, in fact, fun and quite satisfying. — In a recent LinkedIn chat, one “Automation Engineer” said this: “ I happen to consider myself a good automation engineer, and I have worked with many other good ones”

Most likely, a total waste of time. — My article “ChatGPT is Useless for Real Test Automation” was a hit (many reads), with mixed feedback. A common one is “ChatGPT is still in its early version, AI will improve, you can train it yourself”. …

The reason behind my many correct predictions on software technologies. — Over the years, I accurately predicted the failures of the following test automation frameworks: record-n-playback tools, e.g. HP QTP and IBM’s RFT PhantomJS headless testing Protractor.js TestCafe, Pupetteer, and Cypress while these are not deprecated yet, there is a clear sign of moving towards Playwright. Selenium-Grid It has been completely rewritten…

You cannot master it by watching some ‘test automation training’ videos. Be aware of talkers! — I authored 13 books (on test automation & continuous testing), spoke at software testing conferences, and published 300+ articles (146 were featured in leading software testing newsletters). It is probably not a brag to say I can talk about test automation. My test automation knowledge came from hands-on work. …

A clear sign of failed test automation. — Recently, one software engineer told me that there was a test automation suite that runs on a fixed version of Firefox. I asked, “it must be failed, or it has not been run for a long time”. The reply, “Yes”. It does not make sense to use Firefox for test automation from a few years ago According to the latest desktop browser market share stats (StatCounter…

Avoid hypes, do real hands-on end-to-end test automation daily. Raw Selenium WebDriver + RSpec is better. — My recent article “ ‘Cucumber is Dying’, What did we learn?” turned out to be a hit, in terms of reads within my 300+ articles. I have been warning people about “Gherkin” in test automation at software testing conferences, in my books, during my coaching, …, etc. There were disagreements…

Human weakness. — If I ask you, “A car is well-designed as Poshcue, easy to maintain as Toyota, safe as Volvo, certified by the top government authority in every country, and accelerates as Ferrari. Also, it is super easy to drive. Its price is $0. Will you buy it?” The answer, of course…