Test automation is the use of special software to control the
execution of test plans. It’s comprised of comparisons of actual outcomes against
predicted outcomes, test preconditions, and report functions. It’s designed to
increase productivity, so don’t worry.
It usually follows outsourcing, which is where a company
hires really determined humans that live far away to do three times the work,
in half the time, at a fraction of the cost. It’s designed to increase
productivity, so don’t worry.
Video game automatons get all Chicken Little when either come around. I never know how to feel when this stuff appears on the scene. Its entrance
is always the same though, basically the monorail song with words like synergy,
pain points, and verticals sprinkled around.
People speak of automation like it’s the precursor to Skynet.
First the geo scripts then the robots then the time travel then the Sarah Connors.
Nobody gives credit to the stuff that has to come before it to make the other
thing a reality, namely humanities prolonged game of hot potato with what is seen
as grunt work.
Watching the maid clean up house through the sliding double
doors while you sit in a hammock sipping a cold drink sounds a lot better than
doing it yourself. And having a Roomba doing it absolves both the guilt and the
need to keep an eye out for theft. A win win.
If a bleak future of
robotic servitude is to come it’s probably because the robots got tired of
doing something, and ran out of other robots willing to do the job. Or they need our blood for oil, either way. I ain't even mad at automation. There are things
that automation can’t do that a human can do... Umm...Right? Well, we enjoy what we
make, there is that.
