Automated Test Scripts Shall be in the Syntax of a Scripting Language, Naturally!

Simple and yet powerful scripting is the way to succeed in test automation.

Occasionally at talks, I got questions like the below:

• You build a testing IDE (TestWise) from scratch, why not an Eclipse plugin?
• Besides Ruby, what’s your view of test scripts in other languages, such as Java or C#?

“End-to-End Test Automation, e.g. Web Testing in Browser, is not limited to software engineers, but rather, to the whole team. For a real test automation implementation, A business analyst or manual tester can understand the test scripts, and run (even edit) them.” — Zhimin Zhan

The first question is easy to answer: automated testers don’t need the complexity of Eclipse, a programming IDE. They just need a simple tool that is easy to view/edit/run test scripts. (Debugging automated test scripts is completely different from debugging code, in terms of tool use. No step-over, step-into, breakpoints, …, etc, which are not efficient in the context of automated tests. I will write a separate…