Reading Alton Brown’s memoirs – he has a distinct disdain for ‘unitaskers.’ Gadgets designed for a single purpose. Note the garlic press: purpose built to press garlic.
– They add expense. Sure most garlic presses range from $10-20, but that’s still more cost to your kitchen.
– They require intensive maintenance. They are difficult to clean, sometimes requiring their own special cleaning tools.
– The return on investment is low. You’re swapping the cost of cutting garlic with the cost of maintaining the device.
– They take up space. Your pantry has limited space – space used on a garlic press is less space for other equipment.
– They create reliance. By only learning how to use a garlic press, you’re limiting your skills. If yours is broken or lost, you’ll need a replacement.
All of this for an activity that is easily replaced by learning basic knife skills or leveraging other culinary techniques for cooking with garlic.
Think of it this way. Your goal is to create delicious dishes. That requires skill, and your gadgets support and augment your skills.
These skills help you assess fit for purpose. Have you considered that one does not ‘press’ garlic, you mince it – and a garlic press just destroyed the garlic? The garlic press covered a problem by creating a new problem that is now much harder to detect – something unlikely to occur to you as you invest your time into cleaning it.
The goal of Quality Engineering is to create a high quality product. Test Automation is a subset skill – it exists to support that goal, and test automation tools are your gadgets. Your tools do not produce quality anymore then a garlic press creates garlic bread.
Automation tools are rife with pitfalls and great marketing. How much time is that tool really saving you? Is your product better for it? Or are you too busy debugging the flakey tests to think about it?