Testing Castlevania, Playwright to Selenium Migration and More TGNS136

What low code, no code solution should you try next? How can you migrate from Selenium to Playwright or even if you should? And which skill currently has a shortage of qualified folks? And how can testers learn from it? Find out in this episode of the Test Skill News show for the week of September 22nd. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this. First up is a deal from this week's new show sponsor, Catalan. So I speak with a lot of testers and one tool many recommend to me is is Katalon Studio. So whether you're just getting started with automation or you're a seasoned pro, I've seen Katalon at Starrees and they gave a demo and Catalan showed me different ranges of features to meet testers wherever they are on their journey without requiring deep coding skills in one feature. Many testers tell me about Catalan's how flexible it is. So it allows testers to start with no code or a load code solution and then scale up to more advanced scripting if needed. And for teams working across different platforms like mobile, web or APIs, the ability to reuse tests can also be a big time saver. The reason why I bring this up is they just brought to my attention they're running a special deal. Catalan is currently offering a 50% discount on licenses in October for new customers. So it could be a good time to explore if you're looking for ways to improve your automation, especially as we start to lead into the new year in As I always say, it's important to evaluate what works best for you and your specific needs in your workflows. Not every tool works for everyone. One tool may be better for others. So Catalan might be an option to explore if you're looking to enhance your test automation capabilities. So seeing as believing checking out for yourself, head on over to Test Guild me Catalan now and let me know what you think. All right. Speaking of tools, if you're looking to migrate from Selenium to Playwright, I have a new blog post I just came across from Nirajan and it's all about how GenJobs tech team details their migration journey from Selenium to Playwright for the automated testing needs. And this article outlines the motivation behind the switch, key challenges and the substantial benefits that they're experiencing. So as we all know, Selenium has been the go to automation testing for many years and especially at companies like Zen Job. But they identified multiple defects, particularly in dealing with asynchronous events and and browser capability issues. So they investigated Playwright and they noticed that Playwright seemed to be a more robust alternative and it offered enhanced reliability, faster execution speeds and more comprehensive cross browsing support. And they go over the comprehensive migration process, which involved rewriting and reorganizing existing tests to leverage Playwright's advanced features like auto weighting, better API coverage and improved debugging tools. And they outline how this transition required meticulous planning and team effort, but has resulted in more stable and faster test runs. Of course, not everyone that uses Slim should migrate, and as always it should be done for a specific reason and not just to use the latest and greatest. And most folks are probably better off just sticking to their existing Slim automation frameworks if they are stable and are producing good results for you. If not, maybe it's time to explore, but software testers should always be considering and evaluating new tools on a regular basis to be prepared to invest in transitioning to to other tools or technologies if needed. So definitely an article you should check out. You can find a link for it in the comments down below. And speaking of new tools, as a tester you should probably check out I just saw this on Julia's post on how her company QualityWorks has just launched a new AI powered Jira plugin called AI Test Case Generator, and this tool is designed to help teams automate the creation of test cases directly within Jira, offering users a more streamlined approach to managing the test automation process. And by leveraging AI, the plugin aims to improve efficiency and accuracy, hopefully to reduce the time spent on manual test case writing. And the new plugin is now available on the JIRA marketplace. Does it work well? Check it out for yourself and see if it does for your situation. Obviously this is not going to be a silver bullet, but it might help you with test case generation or at least get some conversations going within your teams. And once again, you can find that in the link down below. All right, this next article goes over a feature of Playwright we mentioned earlier and it's all about Playwright API for Automation. So in this blog post recently published by Sarosh on LinkedIn, it delves into the Playwright API for Automation, offering a detailed hands on guide designed for software testers. And the post highlights some of the benefits of Playwright as a testing tool, illustrating its capabilities with a step by step instruction for setup, writing tests and running them effectively. And Sharosh begins by explaining how to install Playwright and its dependencies, followed by setting up the environment. He underscores the simplicity of writing initial tests and the value in creating scalable, maintainable scripts. And the post also shows how the process of running parallel tests, capturing screenshots for debugging and integrating PLAYWRIGHT continuous integration CI pipelines can be done in and a big shout out to Alan Richardson as well, the evil tester who he gives props to as well. So definitely another must read if you're using Playwright. Check it out, let me know your thoughts. And this next post also came my way via LinkedIn and it's how Yugendra has just published a new article that explores how RAG retrieval augmented generated apps can be applied to software testing. So this article goes all over what is rag, why you should use it if you don't know. It combines retrieval based AI models with generative models as well, and it helps ensure that data used in test generation and requirement validation is accurate and up to date. So RAG apps can assist in creating test cases, analyzing requirements and even automated user scenarios. And by leveraging real time data retrieval, testers can maintain test accuracy, making it a valuable tool for continuous testing. So this post includes how to get started implementing by setting up a RAC system locally on your machine using open source solutions. It also provides some examples of using RAG for testing activities for you to try, like creating a test oracle and generating and analyzing test cases. If you want to get your hands dirty, try something for yourself. Here's something you should definitely check out and you can find a link for it in the links down below. All right, this next article is a really fun use case of using Testing for a cool game Castlevania so David from Antithesis recently showcased how its platform was used to conquer the classic NES game Castlevania by identifying overcoming obstacles with advanced test coverage techniques. And a lot of people on LinkedIn were saying how this was a great read. And the article dives into how their tool effectively explores vast state spaces and complex systems, much like tracking hard to find bugs in software. And the same approach can be applied to modern systems and helping testers find edge cases and hidden bugs. It also goes over how Antithesis use their deterministic hypervisor to explore the game, systematically focusing on navigating difficult stages and overcoming barriers like the stoppers in stage six and the testing method identified challenges in grid based exploration, refining their system's approach to covering all states in the game, and this approach mimics how they identified how to reach bugs in software by adjusting inputs and focusing on unexplored states. So definitely a fun read you should check out for sure. And also by the way, just leads into, if you don't know, opening for Automation Guild 2025. Our ninth annual online event, the Early Bird is now available for you to register for to get the deepest discounts once we go live. And the theme of the event is classic games like the NES one that we just covered, things like that to give it a fun gaming vibes. Definitely check this out as well. You can find the link for this also down below. Up next is our webinar of the week that is happening tomorrow. I'm going to be hosting this webinar on how AI can be applied to automating enterprise app testing. From Salesforce to SAP, see how AI driven tools can reduce errors and hopefully accelerate your release cycle for package based applications, which I know a lot of people are struggling with. So joining me will be Tal and guy from Blink IO and we're going to explore the current market challenges, discussing how AI can dramatically enhance the speed and accuracy of testing processes and show you exactly how your team can leverage these tools to achieve faster and more reliable results. And by attending, you're going to get an exclusive look at a live demo showcasing AI in action. So register for that down below. Hope to see you there. Do you know which labor gap now stands at 40 million open jobs? If not, check it out. So I found this on Shannon's post on LinkedIn and she points out how the cybersecurity industry faces a significant labor shortage with approximately 4 million jobs vacancies going globally. And in response, she mentions how her company intends to has successfully raised 33 million in funding to advance its AI driven cybersecurity tool aimed at mitigating this workforce gap. And this TechCrunch article goes into detail how intensive AI tools are designed to automate threat detection and response, significantly reducing the need for human intervention. And by leveraging AI, the company aims to provide organizations with robust cybersecurity solutions, minimizing the impact of the labor shortfall. And to help you, I just released yesterday a new podcast on why Security Testing is an important skill for QAs with Boris who talks all about why security testing is more important now than ever for testers and ways you can learn security to help improve your career options as well. All right, for links of value we covered in this new show, hand it over to the comments down below. So that's it for this episode of the Test Skill News Show. I'm Joe. My mission is to help you succeed in creating end to end full stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.