Ask HN: What is the real value of UI testing?

Posted by jztan on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @10:00AM
from the ask-hn dept.

Many developers here have probably dealt with flaky and unreliable UI testing. These tests are also very cumbersome to write and maintain because the frameworks are not great. Do people think that UI tests emerged simply for the sake of corporate interests? Do they actually provide regression stability? What would you improve about current UI testing frameworks if they had a magic wand?

( 2 comments | 3 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: What is the real value of UI testing? by drpossum on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @10:35AM (#43184612)

If you can't convince yourself that a UI test could test something that might break, I'm not sure a discussion here is going to help you.

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Re:Ask HN: What is the real value of UI testing? by jztan on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @10:58AM (#43184862)

I once worked at a company with 1000 UI tests. Every PR tests would fail because certain backend failures would cause flaky behavior. Then, we started mocking response, and of course they no longer failed. They also no longer caught real bugs anymore. Does that give you some nuance?

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