The bitter taste of lonely coffee - Don't set up a Selenium Java Island

It's not fun drinking coffee alone (especially without wifi!), so here's my caution, be wary of isolating yourself from your team members when starting a test automation journey in your organisation. There are an abundance of questions on test automation forums and groups about which language or framework to pick when embarking on delivering test automation for a project. Should I pick Java, Python, C#, Javascript? etc. The simple answer is a question; what are your team using to build the application under test? What platform, development environment and languages are in the core skillset of the team? pull together, collaborate, problem solve as a team and deliver the code to do the job in hand whether that is application code or test code.

My view is that pretty much any web app development team will be based on Javascript at it's core. Yes there will be other backend components, but you'd be hard pushed to find a team that don't know their Callbacks from their Promises. I saw a post recently re-buffing the slogans of books that teach you to "learn x language in 21-days". Newsflash: that won't happen. Certainly not with Java or Javascript. So surround yourself with people who are seasoned, and also those who are learning, take the journey together and share the experiences you have. Teach the old dogs those new tricks that you pick up!

So my point here is this, as an automation engineer or SDET you are part of a team, don't choose a tool/framework or language that going to isolate you from the team environment, my view is that Javascript is here to stay for web development and it would be wise for you to consider it for your endeavours if that's core to the team, you'll get the nod of approval from devs, it will fit nicely with their deployment infrastructure and they will help you through Callback hell and broken promises (you'll understand when you start that journey!).

Just my thoughts....