codeless automation

I am sure most of you will agree with the statement on Codeless automation – “It’s not truly codeless”. I would rather say that there is nothing as Codeless. This is not a new topic, probably have been discussed multiple times. In this post, I would just like to put my views on the same.

Codeless Automation

These there are multiple tools available claiming to support codeless automation and that anyone and everyone can automate tests without writing a single line of code. If you are still wondering about this, “Codeless automation is an excellent solution to solve the expedited testing and automation which helps or enables quicker deployment iterations. This allows you to test an application without writing a single line of code.“ Katalon Studio, AccelQ, Leapwork, CloudQA are some of the best codeless automation tools.

Basically, it’s is all about abstraction. You might be looking at a visual UI, with an abstraction layer that writes the code in the back. The code/script is hidden, which runs in the background.

Why there is Hype on Codeless?

This makes automation simple to learn, develop, execute, and maintain. Along with this, there are several other benefits of it. The most important and the reason I give it a plus is that it helps a lot in a fast-paced development environment. Its economical, user-friendly, comes with lots of features.

The Limitations

codelessYou are completely dependent on what the tools provide and capable of doing. You need to follow and automate with boundaries defined by the tool or framework.

You are losing access to many features like debugging, logging, and any customization at the script level. For example, adding wait time, synchronizations, or error handling. If anything goes wrong, you will not be able to get the exact issue to understand what went wrong with automation.

Complexity increased with complex scenarios. The codeless solution can enable automating simple to medium test cases, which anyway would be easy if you go with writing code yourself. When it comes to a complex situation, the solution might not work as simple as you think. It will increase the complexity level and might turn up not automating at all.

Finally, if writing code and automating things is something that motivates or interests you at work, Codeless Automation is not for you. At the organization level as well, this approach of automation does not fit well, where automation teams with excellent coding skills get demotivated easily. The role of SDET does not lie at all and there is no growth and upskilling for Test Engineers.

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I am not against the Codeless Automation approach or tools. As mentioned earlier I really like some of the features that enable automation to keep up in a fast-paced development environment. Some of the tools/frameworks even enable self-healing capabilities.

Let us know how you think, codeless automation helped you or otherwise.

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