Comments on: Developers in Testing

by: Nishant Verma

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:37:38 +0000

Hey Guyzz….
I don’t understand why you people are trying to equate an application developer and an automation tester who writes code to test something. They are 2 different people with different mindset. I am an automation engineer who writes code to find out bugs and ease my testing process. So while writing code I have different mindset and my objective is to ease and automate my testing. But a developer writes code to achieve an objective may be Requirement Spec or Functionality.

by: ftorres

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 03:05:08 +0000

“A software engineer is a software engineer. The only difference is the goal of the code/tools you write”

I like it too and practice it also.

ftorres

InCisif.net
Web Testing with C# or VB.NET

by: Dr. T_Bone

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:51:51 +0000

I’m so not a computer/SF guy. I had to look up grok because I thought it was a typo. This may help people like me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok (apologizes to Britannica peeps)

by: Brett

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:40:20 +0000

“A software engineer is a software engineer. The only difference is the goal of the code/tools you write”

Coming from the agile pm side of things … I’ll call that one of the most true statements I’ve read on the dev vs. qa debate.

ps - TP, don’t sell yourself short. I have seen many who call themselves ‘application developers’ that aren’t qualified to carry your macbook.

by: Jesse

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:37:45 +0000

I concur with everything you said - Grig, Titus, etc have all been pushing a focus on testing. I had the opportunity to go to the first GTAC - but alas, work got in the way.

Perhaps it’s not just testing in python that needs more focus, but rather Test Engineering - there’s a goblin in the room, and that’s old school waterfall-methodology development where development throws code over a wall to QA, and QA pushes buttons until someone calls it good enough.

This goblin is so deeply entrenched in the software world that people always fall into a binary category - either they write code, or they perform tests.

I don’t see the difference: A software engineer is a software engineer. The only difference is the goal of the code/tools you write. Some of us write product code, some of us write code that proves that codes.

Still others, namely, me, hop in between both. I wouldn’t have it any other way given how complex and distributed systems are rapidly becoming.

I like your statement on being a “failed” application developer “turned QA guy” - I think it’s spot on for many of us who do understand and focus on how things work and interact. I commonly call this practical programming - how does a system *really* work, how do the parts really come together - and most of all, how do you prove any of it.

Ok, I meandered a bit. +1 :)