Hi, James…
I have a few off-the-cuff ideas here, but can I start by offering a reframe?
Instead of thinking in terms of “manual tester moving into automation”, see what happens when you think in terms of “tester learning to write useful little programs”. That might allow you to approach your skills development from an alternative angle. You can certainly ask “What can automation do for me to make me more efficient and cover more areas with regards to testing websites?” You could also ask “What do I want or need to get done as a tester, and how could the computer help me to get it done?” My personal experience is that thinking the latter way gave me lots of authentic tasks (some of them quite simple) that made learning to program much easier. People learn most quickly and easily when they need to learn something.
Sure, programming can be used for automated checks. I’ve also written programs for generating data; for modeling business rules and creating a comparable-product oracle; for obfuscating real-life data; for converting and/or massaging test data from one format to another; for visualizing coverage; for setup and configuration (and for checking whether the system is in an appropriately set-up state); for sorting and searching logs; for obtaining more extensive coverage of specific functions, either by randomizing or iterating through all the possible values for a given setting. Monte Carlo simulations can be a lot of fun.
You can also add depth to the checking you might already be doing. For instance, when performing a set of automated checks, I found interesting bugs by logging and graphing and analyzing the round-trip times.
Ask your developers and your team for testability. When you’re discussing new features or functions, ask for scriptable interfaces and log files, at least. Ask your developers how they might use tools themselves to probe the system; ask for help or offer collaboration in building tools. Be upfront about the fact that you’re learning; not all programmers are enthusiastic about mentoring, but many are when they become aware of a sincere student.
A good IDE can be helpful; on the other hand, some of them are so feature-rich that it becomes a little overwhelming.
It’s not a new or current book, but I’d recommend a look at Brian Marick’s Everyday Scripting in Ruby.
I hope that at least some of these ideas help.
Cheers,
—Michael B.