But, under the hood, the fundamental approach they describe
hasn't evolved in 30 years.
They treat automation as a purely technical problem, as a set of skills to learn and tools to master.
At the end of the day, it comes down the the same thing: they focus solely on how to use automation tools to automate your manual test cases.
That's what we were doing 25 years ago, when we were starting out with automation tools.
PROBLEM IS, IT WON'T WORK FOR TODAY'S FAST-MOVING PROJECTS.
These days, to keep up, you need to start automation during the sprint. Sometimes even before development starts.
And if you're just automating manual test cases, after a feature is stable? (i.e. the way most teams try to do it). Well, no matter what tool your using, chances are it's already too late.
You need to start way earlier. With the requirements themselves.
And that's the trick: you need to learn how to automate your requirements, not your test cases.
Believe me, that changes everything.
But modern test automation is so much more than just a set of tools.
Sure, you'll need to know how to code to do automation. But if you learn to code without the fundamentals, you'll just end up writing fragile, flaky test scripts that are a nightmare to maintain.
Sure, you need to learn how to use tools like Selenium, Cypress, Playwright, Cucumber and many others. These can be challenging to beginners, but once you understand the core principles well, if you learn the right things in the right order, the tools aren't actually the hardest part to learn.
More importantly, modern test automation a mindset change. It's a fundamental shift in the way you think about your role as an agile tester.
An approach that goes back to the fundamental reason you want to automate in the first place: so that you and your team to deliver quality features faster.