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Quality Assurance

Posted by justin beck
justin beck
1,776 Points

where to start for learning how to write automated test scripts

I have been strictly a manual QA Analyst for 5 years and want to take it to the next level and learn to write automated test scripts. I know Selenium is the most popular framework, but do I need to know a programming language in order to be successful with Selenium? I am literally in the beginning stages of this endeavor, so any direction/suggestions/etc will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

2 Answers

Peggy Sturman
Peggy Sturman
3,298 Points
Peggy Sturman
Peggy Sturman
3,298 Points

Hi Justin,

I have also mainly been a black box tester and am making the transition into automation. You can do this.

Is the application(s) you work on desktop or web based? I know that more and more apps these days are web based but I never like to assume. Based on your answer I will be able to give you more guidance.

The short answer in regards to programming is that you will need to know a language. You won't have to be a master at it but you will need to learn. In my own journey I work on a web applications so I'm using a combination of JavaScript/Node/Selenium. I had no previous programming knowledge when I started.

justin beck
justin beck
1,776 Points

Thanks Peggy!

My current position deals in iOS apps, and I have been using xCode to create some automated tests over the last couple of weeks. I would like to learn how to write scripts for web applications in my free time. I'm thinking I'll start by familiarizing myself with selenium, then start learning a programming language. Do you think that's a good plan? Any feedback or tips are very much appreciated.

Peggy Sturman
Peggy Sturman
3,298 Points
Peggy Sturman
Peggy Sturman
3,298 Points

Hi Justin,

Very cool. I don't currently work with mobile apps but I hope to in the future.

For web apps I would definitely go the route of Selenium. I would learn JavaScript. It's the language of the web if you will and there are a ton of free resources to learn. I like using Node in that mix. You can write your automation in JS files and use Node to run them. I'm currently looking into Mocha to use as a framework to run all my tests and get results. I want to write 5 or 6 and then work on getting them into something like Mocha. I work will all self taught developers and they are really good guys. They like the path I'm going down and it's pretty easy. You will also want to be very familiar with CSS selectors as that is what you are going to use to select all the different elements on the page.

The Selenium class here on Treehouse I thought was a great overview. For classes here is what I would do:

  • Take a beginning JavaScript class (the one here on Treehouse I thought was great)
  • Take a beginning HTML/CSS class if you are not familiar. If you feel comfortable enough with CSS you can skip

After you get those two down take a beginning Node/NMP class. It's super easy.

I'll post some links in a few to other resources, etc.

Also document your journey. I need to do the same and plan to start blogging about it.

Feel free to reach out with any questions, etc. I feel really passionate about helping people on this journey, even if I am not too far along on it myself. My main frustration was finding easy to follow steps of what I needed to do and finding classes or tutorials that were written in an easy to understand style. I feel I have found some of those.