Automation & the Software Developer

Automation in software development will not kill jobs.

Automated tooling is part of a great software developer's toolkit - rather than a replacement for human programmers. Automation complements software development, increasing speed-to-market, reducing human error, and keeping products up-to-date with continuous integration and development.

How does automation help developers?

Work faster

With automated tooling handling repetitive and straightforward tasks, software developers have more time to focus on solving higher-value problems. A?post?by CodeGrip details precisely the automation steps and tools that help achieve higher productivity. Automation improves and streamlines processes, allowing software developers to deliver code faster and leaving room to build solutions to your customers' problems and fulfill their needs and wants. Code automation tools like Modularis Architect, which is part of PlatformPlus, give your development team the structure to build robust, secure, flexible, and elastic platforms. These tools can help your development team automate a significant amount of coding (up to 70% of your total solution) without losing the customizability and performance that might occur with black box automation tools, such as low- or no-code development platforms.?

More comprehensive and rigorous testing

Most organizations focus on solving the effects of sub-par quality code and not the root cause. In other words, the solution to software quality problems is primarily hiring QA engineers. This approach seems to have a psychological effect on software developers when they know somebody’s job is finding their bugs. This knowledge creates an interesting situation when deadlines are tight and the priority for the developer switches to building the most code in the least amount of time; the quality of the code invariably decreases.

It Is less expensive and more effective to tackle the quality problem at the source: Building quality into writing the code. The value of unit testing goes underappreciated time and time again. Many software development leaders and engineers consider unit testing a waste of time: why write more code to test my code? Yes, It requires more work to write unit tests, two to three times more work.?However, It is not a waste of time or resources.

The practice of writing code to test your code helps the developer think through and exercise the most common usage scenarios. You’ll find 80% of the bugs by covering 20% of the possible scenarios your code will face in a production environment.?Therefore, the quality of the code sent to the QA engineer is in much better shape; hence, reducing testing time.

However, the primary benefit of unit testing is that you can automate it to run every time your code changes to make sure the existing code is running correctly and nothing broke.

Here are some of the specific ways automation aids the quality assurance process:

• Saving time during testing: Automation in software testing decreases the amount of time spent manually testing. Teams can then devote their efforts to more complicated activities that need human interpretation.
• Improved Regression Testing: With faster deployment comes an increasing requirement for regression testing, to the point where human programmers can no longer keep up. Companies may utilize automation to automate some of the most time-consuming regression testing activities and use machine learning to develop test scripts.
• Testing Consistency: Automation is advantageous over human programmers in keeping the testing process consistent. Although QA engineers are skilled at finding and addressing complex problems, some errors can occur due to the QA engineer burning out from completing tedious processing. Automation, however, can keep testing without burning out and test far beyond what a human can in a short time.

Better integration and delivery

Generally, developers must go through a lengthy and awkward process of merging and deploying code to production, mostly done manually. However, automation solves this problem with Continuous Integration and Development (CI/CD) solutions. CI/CD allows for much more efficient production code deployment by automating many of the repeatable tasks. This automation not only simplifies development and deployment but also generates more resilient applications.

Automation makes software development easier

In essence, automation will help your development team build more value for your customers at a higher quality. Your software development costs and delivery times become predictable and easier to manage. You have fewer bugs to worry about, significantly reducing your operation and maintenance costs. The motivation of your development team will be higher; who doesn’t like the thrill of hitting deadlines without burning out? And you’ll have happier customers! A win-win scenario all around!

PlatformPlus allows your team to build new software products & features with significantly less effort, delivered on time and on budget. We give your software developers the right PLATFORM for development, PLUS a full senior-level team of software architects, software engineers, and tech leaders to provide support & training and fill in the gaps on your in-house team. Learn more about the world's fastest development platform.