Ben Weese

So I started out and still work today testing desktop software using no coding. There are still jobs out there that require you to be a user and test their desktop apps. With an ever growing and changing industry is this still viable? Currently it is viable but with everything changing into apps and websites how much longer will desktop apps last? When going through freelance testing the majority of jobs are in websites and mobile apps. Testing blogs are even turning to them as well. Even a company I am familiar with that has grown as a desktop app is soon be moving to a web app in order to stay alive.

Another thing is that automation is becoming bigger and bigger and in a desktop society this is not viable. The application can move which means the UI recorder is hard to keep up with something that can be moved around the screen. However websites and mobile apps are locked into their screens and so you can use automation to test the sites and apps. Testers are now being expected to know how to write these automation test. They are also expected to write and know unit test. This is nice to know but your developer should be using TDD therefore the developers should be writing test first and coding to meet the test they wrote but a lot of Dev are still against TDD. 

So for your future in testing I suggest you pick up how to test websites, mobile apps, and writing automation. Who knows what the future of QA will need in the future.