50 % of developers use Selenium today, yes 50 %! Is Selenium really & nbsp;that good& nbsp; that so many of today ’ s developers use it, more than a decade after it was introduced? That ’ s debatable.

What is Selenium?

Selenium& nbsp; is & nbsp; an open-source project started by & nbsp;Jason Huggins& nbsp; in 2004. The framework allows developers to record and replay commands on web browsers to test functionality. & nbsp; It has be espouse by millions of developer around the world to test the functionality of their web-applications running in mod browsers. & nbsp; I ’ d think something invented 13 years ago within the technology realm wouldn ’ t be that useful today, but there are benefits of Selenium:

• It’s free
• It ’ s open-source
• It has a strong community, including 219 meetups across 40 countries around the world
• It can be integrate into developer other toolsets

That being aver, I haven ’ t found a single developer who ’ s in love with Selenium. & nbsp; Wherever I turn, the words flaky and brittle are synonymous as users describe the software. & nbsp; More specifically, the biggest ailment I ’ ve heard are:

• It ’ s VERY time intensive to preserve
• Tests are oft flaky, meaning tests miscarry for a reason un-related to what a trial was actually written for
• Its out-dated
• Tests are brittle, signify an innocuous change to a page constituent could cause a accomplished test to fail

For a web-app machine-controlled testing framework that was project:

1. before the most popular web browser (Chrome) was relinquish, and
2. before the almost commonly used modernistic web-application deployment program was launched (Cloud)

…is Selenium really so widely used? & nbsp; & nbsp; 

Pro tip: Tools like SUSA can handle this autonomously — upload your app and get results without writing a single test script.

Numbers don ’ t lie

& nbsp; As we started & nbsp;mabl, we developed a & nbsp;survey& nbsp; to get answers to specific questions as it relates to developer creature, with a focus on examination:

1. What are the most popular testing puppet for modern developers?
2. How much do companies spend on these tool?
3. What is the composition of the squad that uses these tools?
4. What are the biggest challenge these teams have? & nbsp;

Surprisingly, the data from this survey tells us that Selenium is the most popular, and there ’ s nothing that even arrive close! & nbsp; Selenium is higher by an order of magnitude vs. its nearest competitors including Sauce Labs and home grown tools. & nbsp; Below are the top 6 tools which developers use today, based on our survey conducted in March of 2017. & nbsp; & nbsp;

Is Selenium really that good?

Probably not. Based on such a important difference between Selenium and all other options, I ’ d suggest that we as an industry haven ’ t innovated fast plenty in developer testing tools as we have in other country of a developer ’ s workflow like CI/CD, Collaboration, Bug Tracking, and Code Repo ’ s. & nbsp; Just look at what Slack has execute for communication, or what Kubernetes for container instrumentation, or Github for source code. & nbsp; & nbsp;

In fact, as I plunge profoundly into the survey results, users themselves said this loud and open – & nbsp; & nbsp;

Developers just aren ’ t happy with the current pick for prove and therefore are continuing to use Selenium due to lack of alternatives. & nbsp; & nbsp;

That being said, this may potentially change in the hereafter. Fair look at the learning and fundraising action within the last 12 months. & nbsp; Testing distinctly isn ’ t as hot a market as security package, but I think that ’ s because we ’ re still in the other degree of people becoming cognisant thither ’ s an chance hither:

• SmartBear Software is acquired for $410M
• Tricentis raises $165M
• Sauce Labs climb $70M
• QASymphony raises $40M

Perhaps given this deficiency of excogitation, paired with eminent degree of users looking for new examination creature, along with new fundraising activity, developers will see test mechanization come back to be “ province of the art ” with the rest of their development toolset. I ’ d be concerned if others percentage a similar view on whether Selenium is really that good or not? & nbsp; & nbsp;