7 Top Programming Languages For Automation Testing [2024]

There are many debates going on whether testers should know programming languages or not. Everyone has his own way of backing the statement. But when I went on a deep research into it, I figured out that no matter what, along with soft skills, testers must know some programming languages as well. Especially those that are popular in running automation tests.

People consider writing codes and debugging is a developer’s job. But as a tester, it is necessary to have a knowledge about all the languages too. As a tester, automation testing tool is one of the biggest tool in your tool shed, and it is all about coding. This is just an example there are many other cases which require knowledge of coding like for example white box testing, API testing, even performance and load testing.

So, let us now jump to some languages that would be a great help for every tester.

Javascript

It is one of the top-notch coding language at present. It is easily understandable and can easily be implemented. It benefits with you with full stack development language as it have overall developer productivity, front-end and back-end functions, code sharing and reuse, higher efficiency rate, easily understandable and convenient to share within team, and many free tools.

Frameworks for Javascript:

Cucumber JS:

It is the most popular framework for JavaScript. Writing code is more like writing instructions in Simple English. Its Uniqueness is what you will like the most.

Nightwatch JS:

Nightwatch is one of the preferred JavaScript frameworks for experienced developers. Built using Node.js, Nightwatch JS is a W3C WebDriver API based automation testing frameworks for web applications and websites.

Protractor

It is an open source functional automation framework which is also known as E2E testing framework which lets AngularJS web applications.

Java

It is platform independent. Widely used for testing J2EE projects but it is also used for testing web projects as well, especially big ones. It is a robust language that helps to execute long test. It also supports you with integration tools like Hudson, Selenium Grid, QMetry etc. Because of its popularity, you can find a large number of testing frameworks built with Java.

Framework for Java

Gauge:

It supports all kinds of platforms and languages. It also have a strong community support because of which it is very easy to extend via plugins. In addition it also have strong native support for external data source.

To learn more about various testing framework for Java follow this guide on Java testing frameworks and select what suites you the best based on your project needs.

TestNG:

It have a very strong community support and it easy to merge test builds. Another reason behind popularity of TestNG is its native support for running test cases parallelly. It is annotation based framework that lets you test in arbitrarily big thread pool. It have flexible test configuration.

Junit:

It is one of the most popular open source tool. It also have easy integration with Java IDEs , eclipse, Netbeans.

To learn more about JUnit in detail, watch the complete video tutorial to gain valuable insights and kickstart your automation testing journey.

Subscribe to the LambdaTest YouTube channel for details guidance on various automation testing process like Selenium testing, Cypress testing, Playwright testing, and more.

Python

One of the most trending programming technology, and popular among newbies because it’s easy to learn. It is scripted and have good community support. Best part of Python is that it supports very large range of OS and browser platforms including old XP.

Frameworks for Python

Behave

Behave is built from ground up to support Behavior-driven development(BDD) and Agile development methodologies. It also helps in easy collaboration between the developers, QA and non-technical in a software project.

Lettuce

It is a also a BDD oriented framework that permits to run automated python tests from plain-text. There is no additional setup needed to setup python compiler.

PyUnit

It is standard unit testing framework module for Python. Based on mature XUnit framework development, PyUnit can reuse setup codes.

C#

A Microsoft language, C#, is an object oriented programming language that supports development of console, windows, and web-based applications. It is a very important language to master especially if your application is built on microsoft technologies.

Frameworks for C#

Nunit

It lets you the test results in readable format and lets the allow testers to debug the automated tests.

To learn what NUnit is and how to get started with, refer this guide in NUint and get valuable insights.

Visual studio unit testing framework

Built for the Visual Studio development platform by microsoft, Visual Studio unit testing framework (also know as MSTest), is a very popular tool among .Net developers.

SpecFlow

Specflow is another open source framework that works seamlessly with Gherkin Parse, .Net framework, and even Xamarin. In addition you can also use other C# based libraries with it like NUnit, MStest, xUnit and MbUnit.

To understand the differences between each framework, refer to this guide on the differences between NUnit vs xUnit vs MSTest. It will help you choose your testing framework efficiently.

To get started with unit testing frameworks like MSTest, watch the complete video tutorial below. It will help you speed up your development process by performing efficient unit tests.

PHP

PHP is an open source web development language favored by a huge community of website makers. WordPress, which powers around 30% or all websites, is built using PHP which highlights the importance of this language among web developers. In addition to this what adds up as an advantage to it is PHP do not require any additional setup after installation in the system.

Frameworks for PHP

Codeception

Codeception is an automated testing framework that makes the code easy to read, write and debug. It is also called as Behavior Driven Development(BDD).

Behat

Behat is an open-source testing framework that is favoured by developers because of ease of test case management it provides.

SimpleTest

It is used for the unit as well as Web testing framework that supports proxies, SSI, forms, frames etc. it is easy to understand and natively help in tracking of bugs during unit testing.

Ruby

It is an open source language as well and enjoys a huge number of community built libraries. It has the capability of maintaining test cases. It supports xUnit frameworks like Web UI, test automation etc.

Frameworks for Ruby

Capybara

It is a web-based test automation framework that is used to create functional tests supported by web servers, Rack::Test, selenium- webdriver, and capybara-webkit.

RSpec

It has a simple syntax that is similar to written language. It can re-use set-up codes. It also supports xUnit frameworks and help in both TDD and BDD development styles.

Minitest

It helps you run your tests easily. It has a very simple and clean spec, with mock/stub system. It is a splendid library that helps in accessing your algorithm’s performance.

Perl

Perl is a platform-independent scripting language. It is primarily used for text processing. It is also used in different areas of testing like GUI, Web, Networking. It is used along with algorithmic and object-oriented programming. It also provides different types of functional, unit and integration testing. For those preparing for technical interviews, mastering concepts related to object-oriented programming can be highly beneficial read oops interview questions.

Framework for Perl

Perl Unit

It provides test runners for running tests. It also provides the assertion for testing expected results.

Learning seems to be a never-ending process that comes up along with great skills. So, I won’t say that these are the only languages that a tester should know or only skills that he should possess. But having knowledge of these will definitely give him an edge over others!

We have learned about various programming languages and their supportive frameworks that are good for getting started with the automation testing process. However, limited resources and usage of frameworks can slow down your automation. To boost and expedite your automation and resolve the challenges faced, using a cloud-based platform like LambdaTest is beneficial.

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform that lets you run manual and automated tests at scale with over 3000+ real devices, browsers and OS combinations.

Happy Testing.

Harshita Bisht

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