Since I’m new to this , I’m going to quote someone wiser than me but who I agree with. I have been reading Alan Page’s book, which is more “automation philosophy” than a technical book. But I really like what he says here, because it jive with how i got interested in automation - not just automated testing, but all around task automation:
Good testers test first – or at the very least they think of tests first. I
think great testers (or at least the testers I consider great) first think
about how they’re going to approach a testing problem, then figure
out what’s suitable for automation, and what’s not suitable.
…
I have my own heuristic for figuring this out – I call it the “I’m
Bored” heuristic. I don’t like to be bored, so when I get bored, I
automate what I’m doing. When I’m designing tests, I try to be more
proactive and predict where I’ll get bored and automate those tasks.
You’re a tester first an automated tester second. This makes sense to me.
I also get bored easily, and I don’t like wasting time. I don’t even have to COMPLETELY automate anything. I’m working on an Autoit script now for something that is connected to a physical device that requires user interaction, but which requires many, many repetitive keystrokes at the computer. I can’t automate the whole thing (without building some kind of robot…it’s possible) but the parts i can automate, I will automate, and I’ll get the job done a lot faster and with less mistakes.
I’m new to testing, but I imagine it’s the same, and the Page quote was nice because here was an experiences person saying what i was already thinking.
I know this is not as specific as some of the above contributions,but I hope it is a useful contribution.
-Dave K