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🎙️ Episode Title: Is BDD Dying? Did Low-Code Kill It?

In this episode of Modern Software, host Mike Verinder is joined by Andy Knight (aka The Automation Panda) for a thoughtful, spicy, and at times hilarious conversation about the state of Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) in 2025.

BDD was supposed to revolutionize how teams collaborate—bridging developers, testers, and business folks through shared examples, plain English, and clarity of intent. But somewhere along the way, it became... Gherkin files nobody reads, tools nobody maintains, and a checkbox item that often misses the point.

So we ask the honest question:
👉 Is BDD actually dying? And if so... did low-code kill it?

🧠 What We Cover in This Episode:

• What BDD was meant to be vs. how it’s used today
• Why Gherkin became more of a burden than a bridge
• The explosion of low-code and codeless tools (like Testim, mabl, and Functionize)
• How AI-generated tests and tools like Copilot are changing the testing landscape
• The rise of “automation for all” and how it bypasses dev-tester collaboration
• Why BDD still can work—and where it shines (especially in complex domains)
• A look at how enterprise systems like Cycle Labs use or abandon BDD
• The danger of skipping the conversation and automating everything
• Whether “Specification by Example” is the future BDD should’ve been

🔍 Quotes from the Episode:

“BDD isn’t just a testing framework—it was supposed to be a conversation.”
— Andy Knight“It’s not that BDD is bad. It’s just that most teams never actually did BDD.”
— Mike Verinder“We didn’t kill BDD with tools. We killed it by skipping the human part.”
— Andy Knight

🎧 Who Should Listen to This Episode:

• QA engineers and SDETs wondering if BDD is worth the effort anymore
• Developers who’ve written Gherkin and felt it added nothing
• Test managers or VPs exploring low-code automation platforms
• Product owners curious about how testing is shifting left (and sideways)
• Anyone trying to bring better collaboration to their SDLC

🙋‍♂️ About Our Guest: Andy Knight – The Automation Panda

Andy Knight is a software engineer and quality advocate known for his blog AutomationPanda.com and speaking engagements around the world. He’s a prominent voice in the test automation community and deeply passionate about making software quality accessible, collaborative, and sustainable.

🎙️ Hosted by Mike Verinder

Mike is the founder of Modern Software, an open-source support company and creator of the Modern Software Podcast. He runs the largest Selenium group on LinkedIn and works with companies exploring test strategy, automation tooling, and real-world software delivery problems.

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BDD, Behavior Driven Development, test automation, low-code testing, software testing, testing podcast, automation strategy, AI in testing, Andy Knight, Automation Panda, Gherkin, Cucumber, Spec by Example, Cycle Labs, Mike Verinder, QA podcast, DevOps, software engineering, developer tools, Agile testing, Selenium, Playw

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