Rafi has recently turned 18 and started freelancing as a Tester Work tester. He is a Romanian high-school student and he shares his freshly acquired insights into the differences between manual and automatic software testing.

Testing means checking the correspondence between the application specifications and its actual implementation.

There are 2 general types of testing: manual and automated. Considering the software functionality that needs to be tested and how many times those tests need to be run, the right solution can be either of 2:

1. Manual testing is suitable for systems that do not require repetitive testing and generally involve complex and high-impact changes. Companies that sell software products that can be customized for each customer often use manual testing to verify the most against the base product.

2. Automated testing is especially suitable for software systems that involve simple and repetitive actions, well-defined actions, and that operates according to a clear set of rules. In general, automated testing is used for performance tests performed on various software systems and testing some functionalities that, although they do not undergo direct changes, can be indirectly impacted by certain updates made at the code level.

An example of this can be represented by any banking application. When a bank implements a new functionality within its application, almost all other functionality must be tested so that the testers ensure that there are no security issues or cause correlations between the new functionality and the rest of the application. In the context where banking applications are constantly evolving, it is much easier to automate a series of tests for the entire application, tests that run every time updates are made to the applications and that alert the projects if there are problems.

It is important to note that compared to manual testing, automated testing involved, and programming knowledge, the main applications that help with automated testing are in one form or another programming concepts.

It is important to remember that the types of testing are not mutually exclusive, they often coexist within a company. There are cases where manual testing lends itself and there are cases where automated testing is more efficient.

Anyone passionate about the IT field can become a tester as long as they are an analytical thinker, know how to look at a situation from several perspectives, and have an ounce of creativity.