“Cucumber is Dying”, What did we learn?

Avoid hypes, do real hands-on end-to-end test automation daily.

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The article title is not clickbait. It is the headline of Software Testing Weekly #166 (on 2023–05–01).

“Back in February, Matt Wynne — the last of Cucumber’s co-founders who actively worked on the project — got fired. He shared about it in this blog post.

That raised questions about the project’s future. Someone even claimed that Cucumber is dead which sparked a big discussion on Reddit.

So what’s next? Without a bigger sponsor behind the project, the chances for its growth and maintenance are lower.

On the other hand, thousands of people and companies still use it. So now it’s up to the community.

But I’d think twice before picking Cucumber again.”

While the official announcement (like previous failed Phantom.js and Protractor) is not out yet, it is fair to say “Cucumber is dying”. I will elaborate on Matt’s blog post shortly.

Table of Contents:
· FAQ
∘ 1. Cucumber is just a Ruby implementation of Gherkin, maybe others such as SpecFlow in C# that work well?
∘ 2. How about other Gherkin frameworks, such as SpecFlow, not created by Cucumber Ltd?
∘ 3. Is BDD (Behavior Driven Development) about to die, too?
∘ 4. So, is this hugely-popular “BDD with Gherkin in Test Automation” a total fruitless hype?
∘ 5. Is there business value for BDD Gherkin in test Automation?
· How could so many people get it wrong?
· What lessons do we learn?

Firstly, as a programmer who has worked on open-source projects, I feel pity for the creators of Cucumber. While I always think “Gherkin is bad for end-to-end test automation” (see my article: “Why Gherkin (Cucumber, SpecFlow,…) Always Failed with UI Test…