My Most Viewed Articles on Vocal — (Updated Monthly)

As I am still in the process of migrating 300+ articles from Medium to Vocal, some articles here will be linked to Medium (in italics, only Medium Members can access them, the same articles on Vocal will be free for all).

Most Viewed Article Right Now: A Story: Principal Software Engineer Undermines E2E Test Automation

Most Viewed New Article Last Month: N/A

All-Time Most Viewed (All: Series; Favourites; Featured in newsletters)

1. Why Cypress sucks for real test automation? (Part 1)
2. Why Gherkin (Cucumber, SpecFlow,…) Always Failed with UI Test Automation?
3. Which Selenium WebDriver language binding is best?
4. One Simple Test Automation Scenario Interview Question that Most Candidates Failed
5. Optimize Selenium WebDriver Automated Test Scripts: Speed
6. Why JavaScript Is Not a Suitable Language for Real Web Test Automation?

Bio

Test Automation and Continuous Testing Coach, Speaker, Author, Trainer, International Award-Winning Programmer, and Product Owner.

Creator of TestWise (the next-generation functional testing tool) and BuildWise, an international award-winning Continuous Testing (CT) server. Pioneer of Functional Test Refactoring and CT techniques such as Auto-Retry and Dynamic Ordering.

Zhimin authored 13 books on test automation and two on programming, also is regarded as a “top software testing writer on Medium”, with 150+ articles featured in the leading software testing newsletters (probably №1 in the world for two consecutive years since started blogging in 2021).

Zhimin developed several highly-acclaimed apps, with his test automation and continuous testing knowledge and the help of TestWise & BuildWise, such as ClinicWise, SiteWise CMS, WhenWise, and TestWisely, all in his spare time. Yes, Test Automation and CT can greatly increase a software team’s productivity.

Some of my Quotes

Working Automated Test ≠ Good Reliable Test

Efforts on E2E TEst Automation

1. Test Creation, ~10% of total efforts

2. Test Stabilization and Refinement, ~30%

3. Ongoing maintenance, ~60%

Selenium WebDriver is the best web automation framework, better than any other ones in market, by a big margin, in nearly all aspects.

35-Word Functional Test Automation Strategy:

"Write 1+ Automated End-to-End Test for a user story; Add it to the regression suite; Run the regression suite daily and keep them valid! Starting on the first day and then every day!"

Specific and correct Test Automation Practices will be deprived of this 35-word test automation strategy.

Fact: Web Test Automation changed little over the last two decades.

There is no reason for test automation engineers to fail, yet, 95+% failed.

Engineering: proven and repeatable process that builds to last.

Test Automation Engineers, the word "Engineers" in your job title has meanings.

The App in an Agile project changes frequently, and will continue to do so. Test Automation Engineers, accept this simple fact. Don't ever use "app changed" as an excuse for failing to maintain automated E2E test scripts.

Ruby is the Best Scripting Language for End-to-End Test Automation.

There is no rule mandating that the “Coding Language and E2E Test Scripting Language Must be Identical”. In fact, Mostly Better to be Different.

Automated Test Scripts Shall be in the Syntax of a Scripting Language, Naturally! We call test scripts for a very good reason.

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.

While IT executives like to talk about "Release Early; Release Often" and "One Team, One Dream", in the heads of many middle managers and software tech leads: "Another Day Another Dollar". A good IT executive values E2E Test Automation and Continuous Testing at the highest priority. Once he/she does that, the team culture will be instantly better, as software development becomes transparent.

A simple rule of end-to-end test automation: if one step of a 100-step test script is not implemented or not working reliably, the whole test script is useless!

“The reason that you and your team are hired is to develop a custom software solution. A generic AI bot won’t help you”

“It is neither possible nor necessary to achieve 100% coverage in software testing”

“You cannot test enough for software. But you can keep the existing automated tests valid and useful.”

Framework makes it work; Tool helps you be productive. Don’t let a tool to control you! *

“A simple rule of end-to-end test automation: if one step of a 100-step test script is not implemented or not working reliably, the whole test script is useless!” *

-- more to be added--