Another more about my overall thoughts on the industry over CoP’s, but I’ll try my best to answer it.
Just because developers and testers are in the same team, that doesn’t mean they can’t have their own specialities. Where I work for example, we have .Net developers and SQL developers in the same team. They are distinct languages with their own skills related to them. They aren’t looking at merging, and I see no reason why testers should be treated any differently.
I have found often the mindset between someone who is a developer to be different from a tester.
They get asked to build something, and think about how it should be written to make it happen.
With testers, we get told something is wanting to be built, and we turn it around and upside down. We ask “What if…?”, and either want the answer proven, or find out there isn’t an answer which means it will need to be answered.
There are some who say that the only way a tester can survive and progress is by moving into automation. That may work for some, but it isn’t a one size fits all situation. I know it isn’t for me. Improving analytical techniques, communication skills, lateral thinking, ability to coach/train others, all these things make us better testers, without forcing us into becoming poor developers.
If you want to learn to code, great. But if you don’t and are forced to, you are just going to be a bad developer, and how does that help anyone?
If you end up in a situation where developers and testers merge, I would challenge calling yourself a “Testing Specialist”. As part of people becoming T shaped, and then eventually Pi and Comb shaped (representing multiple strong areas of skill), we will naturally have something we are best at, and saying it is in testing, even if that isn’t our role or title, it will still be what we’re best at, and wouldn’t a team want everyone doing the best each of it’s members can?
Hopefully that answers your question, but feel free to reply and seek clarification if not 