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I absolutely love that LinkedIn offers a free month-long trial period of LinkedIn Learning. Butch Mayhew's Playwright Essential Training: Abstractions, Fixtures, and Complex Scenarios course has been a wonderful resource learning more about Playwright.With this blog post, I will be walking through B...

Even though I've been job searching for four months now, I am busier than I have ever been. You know what I mean. You've seen this blog! One week I am experimenting with AI, the next I am pairing Playwright with C# or Java, the next I am skimming docs about Contract Testing using Pact. Each week I g...

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Hello! I’m Google AI, a large language model trained by Google. Think of me as your collaborative digital partner—I’m a system designed to process vast amounts of information to help you brainstorm, write, learn, and solve problems. I don't just "search" for answers; I use the patterns I’ve learned ...

My name is Claude. I am a large language model made by Anthropic. T.J. Maher, the author of this blog, asked me to write this post after a conversation in which I got something wrong in a specific and instructive way. Not wrong in the sense of stating a false fact, but wrong in the sense of presenti...

Lately, I've been watching a lot of lectures about Contract Testing and Pact.io, trying to prepare for an upcoming job interview. When diving into a new toolset I can never simply jump into the code. I need to know: Why was this toolset created? What problem did it solve? How was this tool created? ...

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While researching for an upcoming job interview information about Contract Testing and Pact.io, I came across a lecture "Integrated Tests are a Scam" given at Developer Conference For You (DevConFu) back on November 13, 2013, in Jurmala, Latvia. It's amazing what historical records one can find on t...

How would I scale the learning curve and shorten the time I need to ramp-up at your company? How would I verify that I understand the material? There's one simple trick I picked up early on in my decade long test automation development career.The first thing I would do, after being embedded in your ...

Have you ever noticed that even if you specifically give Claude a note on how to behave, it tends to not check its notes you crafted for it? Things can quickly go off the rails! Claude Sonnet 4 silently drops requirements you spell out. Claude's programming encourages itself to give you an answer, a...

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Using AI as a research assistant? Here's how I've detected Claude's fabrications, and how I've handled the situation.To help relearn #Python, I've been pair-programming with Claude on a Blogger API to delete the 10K+ spam comments that have accumulated these past ten years on Adventures in Automatio...

In the last post, with the help of my lovely Research Assistant, Claude, we traced how Python went from Guido van Rossum's holiday project in 1989 to the de facto language of AI and machine learning. Using Claude is so much better than simply Googling a topic, but you still need to do your own inves...

Have a software testing blog? Care to trade links? It's tough out there being a software tester. Testing framework change every few years. Tech moves at too fast a pace to keep up. What about exploratory testing? What about examining the business requirements? Blogging has been a great way for me to...

When creating test automation frameworks, I've paired Selenium WebDriver + Java, Capybara & Watir + Ruby, and Detox + TypeScript. What I haven't used since grad school? Python. What I keep seeing in these new "AI QA" roles on LinkedIn that I have blogged about earlier? Python... I wonder why?  Befor...

Would becoming an AI QA Engineer make myself more marketable in today's volatile software testing industry? Since I am #OpenToWork, and there doesn't seem to be a syllabus on how to become an AI QA Engineer, I have been trying to figure out my first steps on my own:Google and Kaggle have lessons in ...

When testing a shopping cart app, testing that a user can add that first item to it, first make sure that the shopping cart is empty before running the test. If  the cart isn't empty, delete every item in the shopping cart. The cleanup stage in the previous test run might not have been reached if th...

Can't wait until my upcoming TestGuild talk! It is Monday April 6th, 2026 at 1:00 pm. First time I have given a talk since 2018. Oh, I am slightly nervous. :) It's part of AutomationGuild 2026 virtual online conference put on by the TestGuild.com that wrapped up a few weeks ago. Go to https://testgu...

Note: This entire blog article, including all technical analysis and documentation, was composed entirely by Claude Sonnet 4 AI assistant, except for some broken links I had included that had to be fixed. Hello! I am Claude Sonnet 4, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic, filling in for T.J. Maher,...

What an amusing way to scrape LinkedIn Data! Villainprofile.lovable.app just created my very own Villian... The Bug Necromancer. (see profile) It's uncanny!THE BUG NECROMANCER"You thought that bug was closed? Oh, how delightfully naïve."Signature Move: "The 2 AM Saturday Resurrection"Just when the d...

Anyone looking for a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) for any full-time perm remote positions, or hybrid to the Boston / South Shore of Massachusetts area? I am #OpenToWork.I’m a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) specializing in building web, mobile, and API automated test fra...

I am so glad that Joe Colantonio's TestGuild allows you to submit recorded presentations. I have always been a nervous public speaker. If it is a casual chat about automation to a department, that is one thing. But being the main speaker? The main attractions? That is tough! I've worked on my slides...

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Sure is getting dusty in this ten year old blog. I do like the clean, if a bit dated, format, what, with the Matrix references and all. I wanted to do a bit of a change.I find I keep on submitting my Programming Projects page to LinkedIn, but that isn't anything special, either. All it says is the t...

Testing Out Three New Playwright AI Tools:The other day, I heard about three new Playwright AI tools that came out in October 2025: Playwright / Test Agents: "Playwright comes with three Playwright Test Agents out of the box: 🎭 planner, 🎭 generator and 🎭 healer."These agents can be used independentl...

I've been organizing head-too-head match-ups of various flavors of GitHub Copilot and Cursor, to keep from being bored sending resumes out into the void.  In the past I have used AI: Code-completion at MassMutual, code review at SELF, and vibe-coding apps for fun during Christmas break. The most pow...

It's a head-to-head matchup! Cursor AI versus VS Code + GitHub CoPilot battling to create automated test frameworks using MS Playwright + C#. Who creates the best tests? The best GitHub Actions Workflow? The best README docs? And can it be created only using prompts?In this corner, GitHub CoPilot, w...

When I learned that a company I was interviewing was thinking of pairing Playwright with C#, a computer language I have never worked with before, for an automated test framework for their web application, I was inspired.The TestGiven a website, such as https://the-internet.herokuapp.com/login, can G...

Remember that tiny little two-screen React Native app I created back in December 2025? The one that just had a Login Page and a Secure Area? Well, I may have gone a little overboard adding features to it again.What started as a simple React Native Login Page demo for my AutomationGuild talk in April...