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On codeless test automation tool

Disclaimer: This is a quick brain dump, in order to have this thoughts stored somewhere to not having to retype this everytime I’m involved in a discussion about the topic. I might develop this into a full blog post one day.
Nevertheless, happy to hear your opinions on the topic.

These promises of codeless record & playback tools are around for 20+ years.
Imho, there two (or three) possibilities:

  1. You code the stuff yourself, using a real programming language + frameworks/ tools. Imho the most powerful option, but of course also the most to learn/ master. This basically is programming.
  2. You abstract all the complicated stuff away, to an extreme that also non technical people understand it, but you loose most of the power and possibilities of 1.
  3. You hide the complicated stuff behind a fancy UI, that looks shiny and easy to use in their demos, but if you want to do something that goes beyond the happy path, you still need to know & understand programming concepts. So although these tools are marketed at non-coders, the target group cannot reach the full potential of the tools.

Just my 2 cents.

Update 2021-10-05: Bas Dijkstra has written a blog post on the same topic, which is totally expressing my thoughts and believes on the topic, so I can fully recommend it to my dear readers: On codeless automation (or rather on abstraction layers)

3 Antworten auf „On codeless test automation tool“

Nice points, and relevant to me. Currently trying to move into a less „threatening“ or scary automation Framework and trying Katalon Studio. As you so though, some of the tests still require coding underneath to modify the tests – especially if you want to randomise something or you need to do something external to the UI. Post is short but sweet 😉

Hi Chriss, many thanks for this quick post. I really like it, please keep writing to inspire the successors.

A few comments from my side:

1-What do you mean by „extreme“ in …“complicated stuff away, to an extreme that also non technical people“…. Is it „to an extent“ maybe?
2-2 and 3 sound like they are not seperate but connected things (unless I am missing smth :))
3-No/low code tools are marketed also to coders. They are like saying „you don’t have to have any more headaches trying to code, try this instead“ 🙂

Best
Serkan

Hey Serkan,

thanks for commenting.

@1: Yes, that’s totally what I meant.
@2; Yes, they’re related. It’s the same cause, but with different consequences.
@3: Again: yes. They are also marketed to coders. Which is fine. As Bas explains in way more detail in the post I linked, it is totally okay to use abstractions. But you should know about what’s behind, and you should also be aware of the limitations of abstracting things away.

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