Welcome to the 327th issue!

This post by Gergely Orosz got my attention:

Software Engineering Industry Trends.

I'm starting to see a few of these myself. I think code reviews (and verification in general) are the biggest unresolved challenges that most teams face now.

You can find more on that in the news below.

Happy testing!

PS. I'll be at LeadDev in NYC tomorrow. Let me know if you're around!

Dawid Dylowicz

Every big change in tech, from automation to Agile, brings the same worry that testers will lose their jobs. Peter Walen explains that your future depends on how you adapt to using AI.

Moreover, Amruta Lohabare describes The QA Skills AI Cannot Replace (Yet), while someone on Reddit asks: Are QAs with 10-15 YOE getting jobs?

Julia Pottinger explains why exact-match assertions fail on AI features and shows how to test with properties, thresholds and adversarial cases instead.

Also, Pratham Mhatre shares what happened when My LLM Judge Never Said "Maybe".

How should you write test strategies? Jesper Ottosen explains why most people only describe activities and offers three ways to improve.

At the same time, here's a reminder from Stuart Day that Quality Begins with Understanding, while Glenn Wilson explains why We cannot inspect our way out of this mess.

Ruth Recalde shares what years in testing taught them about talking to clients when production breaks, including two common mistakes and what to say instead.

This message pairs well with Stephan Schwarz's point that Your users are not your performance testing team.

A year ago, Austin Parker said AI would change observability for good. Now he checks his own predictions and shares what happened.

Similarly, Ivan Diana gives a good overview of what happens when Shift Left Testing Meets AI Agents.

Looking for a new job? Pay attention — Chris Kenst says it's no longer about your knowledge but also about your experience building AI-powered solutions.

Additionally, Jaclyn Leigh points out What Recruiters Are Missing About Modern QA.

Asserting API tests for mere code status might not be enough. Sonu Khobragade shows why you should also check the database and cache.

On that note, Arafat Uddin makes a related point: Half my test suite asserts that nothing happened.

AI now produces more code than anyone can review line by line. Rachel Laycock points out that we've focused too much on code review and advises catching problems earlier instead, through pairing and design sessions.

Furthermore, Muskan Agarwal says that We Don't Review Test Code Like Production Code and It Shows.

Tatiana Popova compares prompting advice from ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, then removes one feature at a time from a QA prompt to see what changes each time.

Moreover, Filip Hric demonstrates How to Make Your SKILL.md Interactive.

Smart test automation with selective test running is a great way to shorten the feedback loop, but it requires preparation to make it work. David Mello explains how to achieve it.

Good read from Ewa Ostrowska on building a solution to compare a live API against its OpenAPI definition, catching bugs early and fixing them.

Tired of chasing flaky tests in your E2E suite? Varghese Maliekal built a skill that reads pages like a person and reports what it found.

Also, Stepan Kars makes the case that The Best AI Testing Tool Is the Repo Context You Already Have.

Do you really need all those npm dependencies? Andrew Redican shows how he replaced Jest and its 450+ packages with a lean, custom-built solution.

Speaking of that, Gleb Bahmutov shares a tip on why Implicit Assertions Are More Readable.

Parallel Playwright tests that touch the same shared record often fail at random and the usual fix is to serialize the whole suite. Irfan Mujagić explains how the new test locks in 1.63 fix only the tests that conflict.

In relation to that, here's another good read on Data-Driven Testing in Playwright TypeScript with CSV Files.

When a big mobile test suite takes a long time to run, it stops getting tested locally. Mayvin Ramasawmy shares a nine-part guide that builds a working framework from an empty project, one decision at a time.

Choosing between Playwright and Cypress for visual testing? Jaren Charles Cudilla shows why the tool can never really decide what is and isn't a genuine regression.

What's more, Katsuya Oura describes the practical side of Getting Started with Visual Regression Testing That Holds Up in CI.

Have you heard of Quern? It's a free, open-source tool for verifying mobile apps. Alan Richardson invited Jerimiah Ham to tell us more about it in this extensive interview.

In this 13-minute recording, Alex Khvastovich shares his opinion on the trend of companies cutting down on test teams and what consequences it may bring.

Fixing a bug... 😂

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Dawid Dylowicz