I like to think of automation testing as developing, just with a different setof requirements. If the developer's requirement is to write code to implement acertain functionality, a tester's requirement is to write code to test the codethat implements a certain functionality. Sometimes, the first part is harder,other times the last one is. In an ideal world, for every developer working on aproject/code with a focus on functionality there is an opposite developer(automation tester) that focuses on breaking the code (thus making it better).