Cucumber is still quite relevant. Your alternative assumes Ruby, Cucumber does not. I personally enjoy writing Gherkin as I get a large set of feature files th

Cucumber is still quite relevant. Your alternative assumes Ruby, Cucumber does not. I personally enjoy writing Gherkin as I get a large set of feature files that serves as documentation. I don't think it's that great as a DSL or to have someone besides the step definer writing the tests. Maybe that's why you found it hard to maintain. Oftentimes I define single-use steps because my other scenarios simply don't need them. It's definitely a poor solution if you are looking at it from a programming language or code reuse perspective. Instead I use it as a way, in English, to explain features. Granted I use it almost exclusively for integration/systems tests and not unit tests or anything.