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Comment by aksophist | Hacker News Reader

It’s only deterministic for each version of the app. Versions change: UI elements move, change their title slightly. Irrelevant promo popups appear, etc. For a deterministic solution, someone has to go and update the tests to handle all of that. Good ‘accessibility hygiene’ can help, but many apps lack that.

And then there are truly dynamic apps like games or simulators. There may be no accessibility info to deterministically code to.

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There is great approach based on test-id strategy, basically it's a requirement for the frontend teams to cover all interactive elements with test-id's.

It allows to make tests less flaky and writing them is increasing dramatically, also works with mobile as well, usually elements for the main flows doesn't change that often, you'll still need to update them.

I did stable mobile UI tests with this approach as well, worked well

> Versions change: UI elements move, change their title slightly

Not randomly, I'd hope. I think you may be misunderstanding what deterministic means - or I am.

It's crazy to have people so out of their league try to argue against well established meanings.

A testing framework requires determinism. If something changes the team should know and adjust.

AI could play a bit in easing this adjustment and tests but it's not a driver in these tests.

Ever worked with extjs? :/

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