lecture 17 of 170 completed

Choosing tools, and knowing when Playwright is wrong

A senior engineer can name the cases where their favourite tool is the wrong answer.

What you'll learn

  • When Playwright is the wrong answer
  • How to compare tools without advocacy
  • How to make the case to a team

You will be asked to choose a tool, or to defend the one you have. The junior answer is to list features of the tool you know best. The senior answer starts with the constraints.

Playwright is the tool I would pick for most new web projects today. That makes it more important, not less, to be honest about where it is the wrong choice. Being able to say that is what makes people trust your recommendation.

Playwright is a good fit when:

  • You want fast parallel runs without paying for a service. This is a genuine advantage over Cypress.
  • You need several browsers, including Safari through WebKit.
  • Your flows cross tabs, domains or iframes.
  • Your team writes TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java or C#. The same tool covers all of them.
  • You want excellent debugging after the fact. The trace viewer is the best tool of its kind.

members only

Keep reading with the full course

The Foundations track and the first 5 lectures of each framework are free. This lecture is part of the paid course, which unlocks every lecture, all three frameworks, and downloads.

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