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The human reasons behind the rise and failure of so many JavaScript web test automation frameworks throughout the last decade
Human reasons might better explain the nonsense.
I have written an article titled “Too Many Failed JavaScript Test Automation Frameworks!”.
By the way, I have rescued many failed E2E test automation projects using the aforementioned frameworks by applying the same formula: raw Selenium WebDriver with RSpec.
I have listed the popular frameworks above (there are more out there). Considering that our testing target, the web, has barely changed for over 15 years (HTML5 was released in 2018), this “toggling web test automation framework” behaviour is ridiculous.
As an engineer, I have analyzed the technical reasons behind this issue, such as JavaScript language syntax, node_modules, and Async/Await, among others.
Software development is a human activity. When technical explanations fall short of making sense, human factors must be contributing to the issue.
In this article, I will explore the human reasons behind these failures using three memes I found on the internet.
1. Commonly, Developers mandate using JavaScript in E2E test automation
This is a quite common but nonsensical practice. End-to-end (UI) test automation is completely independent of the code.
In fact, as black-box testing, the E2E scripting language may actually be better when different from the code. Over the past 13 years, I have implemented numerous successful Web E2E test automation using raw Selenium WebDriver + RSpec, for apps developed in…
