We are Buggy

It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Slack, and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory.

I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be.

Perhaps you'd like to join me?

--00--

"Developers can’t find bugs in their own code."

I'm not usually so blunt unless we know each other well but, to my mind, if you mean what it looks like you mean, that's just thoughtless and biased bullshit.

Developers can and do find bugs when coding. They find them in the code they are writing now, in code they wrote earlier, in their colleagues' code, and in the code of third-party libraries and applications they are using.

For sure, developers don't typically find all of the bugs in their code, or are less likely to identify some kinds of bugs, and perhaps regard things that you think are "their bugs" as someone else's problem.

But testers don't typically find all of the bugs in their own or someone else's code either, and are less likely to identify some kinds of bugs, and sometimes — although it's hard to believe, I know — also think things are not their problem.

Even you are sometimes fallible, have blindspots, and develop sloping shoulders at times.

Humans, just like our software, are buggy.

For me, more interesting questions include how and when people choose to try to avoid these known pitfalls, at what cost to them and others, and with what level of commitment.

I'd like to have a conversation about how you came to your jaundiced perspective and why you felt the need to tell me today. If it's motivated by a right-now problem perhaps we could look at some practical ways to resolve it.
Image: https://flic.kr/p/6DSHcn

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