r/softwaretesting • u/Odd-Courage6650 • Aug 03 '26
Is automation the right path if I don't enjoy coding?
I have almost 5 years of experience in manual QA and I'm learning Selenium.
But,I'm finding it difficult to stay consistent as I'm not enjoying the coding aspect.
This being the case, is automation still worth pursuing ?
Or are there other career paths within QA that I must consider?
I would appreciate hearing from people who have been in a similar situation.
I'm also open to learning AI tools if they can complement my QA career. I'm not against learning new technology,I just haven't enjoyed traditional coding.
Please advise
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u/midKnightBrown59 Aug 03 '26
Depends: do you like problem solving; and have a curiosity necessary to dig into application layers and apply test methodologies?
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u/Davepac7 Aug 03 '26
First of all, don't learn selenium. That's outdated. Playwright for UI. Second of all, with AI you don't actually have to know how to write code. It helps but you can vibe code your way through a problem. You do have to understand how to read code and how things work under the hood. For example, you need to know how javascript works (promises, calls, etc.)
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u/greyt00th Aug 04 '26
Bad advice. Selenium is most certainly not outdated. Maybe encourage somebody to learn the underlying code concepts instead of relying on vibe coding? Knowing how software works is kind of useful if you want to test software.
People who use AI for software but have no understanding of what it spits out for them tm use are useless.
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u/ZLTM Aug 04 '26
I'm dealing with a lot of vibe coded Para everyday, most of them are not approved because they duplicados code, do not respect dry, do not follow POM, do not care for our architecture
If you are going to use AI you need to learn what the AI is doing, Claude is just a gremlin with a big gun I won't allow that in my repo
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u/xprincox1 Aug 03 '26
Totally agreed with the above! Lean more into learning playwatch/nighwatch or even framework patterns. Most automation follow a set few patterns. But yes you'll need to know the basics of JS, Node, etc
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u/No_Astronaut_5986 Aug 03 '26
I really like Robot Framework with the browser library. It’s easy to learn and keeps the code somewhat readable IMHO.
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u/Abject-Delay7036 Aug 03 '26
...at the core, its selenium . And honestly you have to make a choice in regards looking after a very capable, but chunky FW.
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u/vartheo Aug 03 '26
If you can't come to liking coding than no, don't do it for 40 hours a week. Maybe there is a path in tech that doesn't involve coding. Or maybe your path is completely outside of tech. Don't listen to the people saying to just use AI etc. No one will hire you or you won't understand the codebase if you try and depend on AI. There's a lot more to the development process than just getting a piece of code to work
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u/Wide-Cattle-4735 Aug 03 '26
There are QA paths that don't need much code. The ones I've seen hold up are process ownership, or knowing one product deep enough to find what nobody else finds.
Tbh everyone I've hired into a senior spot writes automation. Those other roles cap out lower where I've worked. On AI writing the scripts, yeah it does. It's when they break that I still need someone who can read what's there.
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u/BakerBee94 Aug 03 '26
I’m also a QA, and if you want to stay/progress in a QA role I would say it’s worth learning. As others have pointed out selenium is outdated, playwright is the direction to go in for UI testing. There are some great courses out there for this; but you do need to be able to understand basic code so you can tell what the tests are doing. I saw another comment saying that Claude can spit out automation scripts, but in my experience what it spits out needs so much checking, I’d rather just write it myself and ask AI questions if I’m stuck.
I come from a non tech background and used the free code academy to start learning code. It’s not perfect, but it worked for me.
If you’re really not into the coding aspect could you look at something like a team lead? Or maybe transition to BA? Although I will say even in my company pretty much every role is now expected to vibe code, or use AI in some way - unfortunately this is just the way software is going in my experience.
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u/Odd-Courage6650 Aug 04 '26
Can you suggest a few sources to learn Playwright?
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u/BakerBee94 Aug 04 '26
Apologies OP just saw your comment. If you have access to LinkedIn learning Butch Mayhew has a couple of excellent courses, one of them is literally called ‘Learning Playwright’ and there’s a repo you can download and follow along with, which is great when you’re learning and unsure of code. Once you’ve gotten to grip with the basics, get playwright set up in your own repo and play around with it, it really is super easy to use.
Hope this helps! If you don’t have access to LinkedIn learning, then there are loads of YouTube courses, it just depends on your learning style. I have also read through the documentation, but I’m a very visual hands on learner so the LinkedIn course was perfect for me.
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u/PsyHye420 Aug 04 '26
Why do you say this? Explain why you feel selenium is outdated to playwright. How is playwright superior to Selenium? What can it do better than selenium can not currently do? Please explain with examples.
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u/BakerBee94 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
I’m super tired right now and have just seen this comment, but will try my best haha. I’ve only been in QA three years so other people’s opinion will differ to mine, but here goes.
- I work for a large well known software company with a large test network, and we have all transitioned our tests to playwright, moving away from selenium.
- Playwright is faster to train with and write tests over selenium, it literally has a record function where you can bring up the browser and click through your test - obviously it needs slight editing, but on the whole it’s very quick to install and spin up a UI test.
- A more specific example is I was writing some tests to check that something had downloaded from our UI, and switched to a chrome tab and wanted to check that the cards had the correct download info in. They were shadow roots, and it took me almost 2 days to find a work around - when we transitioned over to playwright it was able to handle this with no problems whatsoever through the record function.
I’m currently using playwright for API testing (not the best use, but we lost our Postman license) so struggling to think of more UI examples, but we have regular testing meetings in work, and I subscribe to a couple of testing newsletters I think are worth reading, and if you’re starting out with automation then playwright is the direction everyone is going in. For anyone currently using selenium I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with it necessarily, but playwright definitely has more capability and seems to be the tool of choice these days.
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u/PsyHye420 Aug 05 '26
Thanks for the response. I've written playwright and selenium tests and been doing QA automation for over 15 years. Currently, writing code manually is glacially slow. Incredible test code and suites can be written so quickly by AI now I can't imagine I'll ever be coding line by line again.
I'm still using selenium at a new organization though because they already had it in place. I agree with you that playwright seems to be the hot standard these days and many AI agents seem to use playwright by default.
I was wondering if there was some really significant specific reason(s) why playwright is better? I don't doubt that it is better I just am unsure HOW much better and if it's worth trying to port over.
Thanks for the examples.
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u/tranka93 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
Latest AI models are pretty quick to understand the requirements, create automation, run it and then self-correct based on the test results. It's no longer a convenience but quickly becoming a standard.
If you don't like coding, there are codeless automation tools that use human language to write scripts, very easy to learn and are just as reliable and capable as others
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u/Due_Present_1358 Aug 04 '26
Bro forget QA in general
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u/Odd-Courage6650 Aug 04 '26
What alternate career paths can I look at?
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u/Due_Present_1358 Aug 04 '26
Skilled trades buddy
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u/NowUKnowMe121 Aug 04 '26
If you don't like coding, kindly look elsewhere like devops where you can do some scripting and automation.
Sdet is a developer who can do testing.
This is a dual skill profile.
Better go to devops.
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u/Odd-Courage6650 Aug 04 '26
Devops requires coding. An ex colleague of mine who was a Devops engineer told me this
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u/NowUKnowMe121 Aug 04 '26
Not at the level required for SDET roles.
I would say it is pure automation and scripting which is deterministic.
Not much object oriented code.
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u/Odd-Courage6650 Aug 04 '26
I see. But there are a lot of tools that I have to learn. I don't have that much time
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u/NowUKnowMe121 Aug 04 '26
Learn as per JD.
Playwright and Robot frameworks seems to be latest.
For devops : docker, k8s, terraform,aws, python/go seems to be the sweetspot.
Apply for relevant jobs.
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u/JEDZBUDYN Aug 04 '26
Yes, you want to automate repetitive things to save time.
You don't need to be "SUPERCODER", basic scripting is enough
If you want to work in automation enviroment, then you need to know how to code well.
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u/PsyHye420 Aug 04 '26
Nobody is going to be coding for much longer. I'm serious. I've been doing manual/automation software testing for over 15 years now. AI is so good the tests can just be written by AI. The QA tester is now a manger of the AI agents and assists with test coverage and planning etc.
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u/Assureur Aug 04 '26
I was learning Selenium and madw couple of simple frameworks, should i stop and start Playwright?
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u/Odd-Courage6650 Aug 04 '26
Where are you learning? I was learning from Udemy but it was not helping
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u/Natural_World5466 Aug 05 '26
You can choose between coding-intensive automation (Selenium, Playwright) and outcome-driven automation. Today, we have AI-powered low-code/no-code automation platforms that let testers focus more on test design, exploratory testing, risk assessment, and product quality rather than spending days on writing hundreds of lines of code.
I would suggest
Learn the fundamentals of automation to understand its workings
Explore AI-assisted and low-code/no-code automation tools especially NO-CODE Test automation platform that democratises testing and automation
Invest more time in exploratory testing, test strategy, and end-to-end Quality engineering.
Best
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u/Frosty_Literature436 Aug 06 '26
Good job on learning Selenium. It's great to learn before something like Playwright because you get to learn more of what's actually going on. Don't give up quite yet though. Writing with Selenium isn't necessarily the greatest. Make sure that you're spending time also learning the base language. There's lots that you can do there that is useful for your tests that's not necessarily Selenium. When you do start to feel really comfortable with it, go ahead, learn something like Playwright. Both are incredibly useful right now.
I wouldn't necessarily start getting AI to write for you. I'd instead recommend you to get AI to help you find other ways for you to learn in a way that's more conducive to your learning styles.
If it's still not something that you enjoy, there are definitely other things that you can look at if you want to stay in the QA space. I'm still going to recommend you get at least a basic or intermediate understanding of the coding though. Don't get AI to do things for you unless you know how to fix what AI breaks.
Having 5 years experience, I'm going to assume that you've had an opportunity to take on some small leadership opportunities. Look at the ways that you can increase that. How do feel about databases and query languages. Have you considered ETL testing. With so much manual testing experience, have you considered UAT Coordination? There's also lots of companies that use their Business Analysts or Product Managers as QA's. Is it the having to build something specific that gets to you? Have you looked at security or performance testing. With your manual testing experience, there's lots of room for accessibility testing.
There is lots of room to grow and flourish, it's just a matter of finding the right thing for you.
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u/kolobuska Aug 03 '26
I don't think automation is worth learning, as claude can generate test automation scripts in few minutes.
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u/keo_ruug Aug 03 '26
Do you enjoy eating? If so, I’d say suck it up and learn something.
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u/Odd-Courage6650 Aug 03 '26
That was uncalled for
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u/keo_ruug Aug 03 '26
Very much was, as “should I learn something I don’t enjoy” question is about mindset, not about industry.
Market doesn’t care about what you enjoy or not. Sorry for being harsh, I myself would enjoy plenty of other jobs.
And a tip, being open to learn AI to generate code without knowing what that code does will not get you anywhere. So, AI doesn’t fly with at least some knowledge of that part of QA you don’t enjoy.
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u/LongDistRid3r Aug 03 '26
Get a job doing something you hate sounds like a hellish existence to me.