At my workplace we are thinking about buying TestComplete but after using the evaluation version, I'm not sure if it will do us any good.
Creating tests seems to be a lot of work and my boss is not entirely convinced that it's worth it.
On the other hand, we don't have any unit tests, so we desperatly need some automated testing.
I had a brief run in with TestComplete a couple of years ago, and wasn't overly impressed. The scripting language (can't remember what it was off the top of my head) seemed pretty clunky, and as you mentioned it seemed an awful lot of work to create even simple tests.
I think it would be pretty unrealistic for a total non-developer to create solid tests - I think some level of dev expertise would be required, although a dedicated tester who really knows their stuff and has a good level of technical ability may get on well with it
As to the last point, I think you are talking about two different types of testing - TestComplete is more geared towards Functional testing (or it seemed that way to me), where perhaps you would gain more value from looking at implementing a suite of unit tests first (although hard to say without knowing more about your app)
Depends on what you want to test. If you are hard pressed to simulate clicks on the GUI then TestComplete does that pretty well. The object browser and recording functions can be pretty useful as far as doing that.
If you are doing whatever you can to avoid the annoyance of GUI testing then VB script, python, perl, or pick your favorite scripting language. We decided to use JScript for our project and the implementation of it can be 'exciting' at times.
Basically go through the list of features and decide what you are going to use and not use. If you are just going to use it to collect all your test cases, don't bother. If you are going to be heavy on GUI testing, distributed testing, etc. by all means get it.
We use Test Complete to automate all our tests and it works really well. It took us a bit of time to automate all our regression test cases, but it was worth the effort. Now we do daily builds and run our Test Complete tests upon the build and it reports the results back into our test management tool (Software Planner http://www.softwareplanner.com).
We also build a keyword driven interface around Test Complete so that our subject matter experts could create new tests with keywords rather than scripting.
My experiences have been great and I am not a developer, but I do play one on TV.
I've needed developer help when using TestComplete here and there. I would say if the operator of TestComplete can understand basic If Then Else statements and variables, and a developer can help out from time to time, then yes a non developer can use it.
Unit Tests and GUI Tests are different things; Unit tests (non developer warning) test classes, GUI Tests test controls. If you have 5 chunks of abstract resources, you should put 3 in unit tests and 2 in GUI tests rather than 5 in one or the other.
** Just to clarify, TestComplete can run unit tests, but you still have to write them.
I had a nightmarish experience with TestComplete 3.
I've inherited an awful script and an outdated app and with blood sweat and tears I managed to get it to work decently. I learned a lot of VBScript in the way, but not anything near a developer.
Then I've managed to get an upgrade to TestComplete 7. It has absolutely nothing to do with neither 3, 4, 5 nor 6. Ok, it may look similar to 5 and 6 in the outside, but it has many more functionalities. 3 and 4 were so prehistoric that I don't even dare to talk about them.
TestComplete7 is, so far, working as a charm for us. We are doing both standalone and web-based apps, and we have found v7.5 to provide everything we needed.
A non-technical tester may only exploit 5 to 10 percent of TestComplete has to offer and depending on the matureness of the app under test he may find himself losing more time than he is saving.
However, a tester with medium-advanced scripting knowledge might do wonders with it.
All this is our experience from the Functional Test side. We haven't gotten yet to investigate if Unit Test was even possible with it.