Can Code, Can't Code, Is Useful

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--

"If testers can’t code, they’re of no use to us"

My first reaction is to wonder what you expect from your testers. I am immediately interested in your working context and the way that you delineate roles and responsibilities within it.

As presented, the statement seems more absolutist than I am comfortable with. I tried to check my prejudices at the door by looking for situations in which it might be uttered without (excessive) controversy. Maybe these?

to HR, to filter applicants for an oversubscribed testing position
in a consultancy, to satisfy a non-negotiable client demand
on a project where the system under test only has a programmatic interface

Close behind my initial curiosity comes a sense of foreboding that this might be one of those conversations in which the potential value of a specialist tester is not appreciated.

For today, let's assume my scepticism is unwarranted and that you'll humour me for a few minutes by answering my questions because you are interested in having your assumptions challenged and open to the possibility that you might change your mind.

So, without wanting to get heavy about semantics, it was interesting that you phrased your statement with two negatives. To help me interpret it, I tried to sketch some possible scenarios. You can see them at the top.

Some testers who can code are useful but no-one else is
All testers who can code are useful but no-one else is
Some testers who can code are useful along with others who are not testers
All testers who can code are useful, along with others who are not testers

I wonder if any of those capture your thinking more precisely?

While we're on this track, your statements appear very binary. A person can either code or not? A person is either useful or not? Is there no room for nuance at all in your situation?

Could it be that you're thinking about coding and utility in specific and constrained ways? For example, could you imagine a scenario in which a tester had some knowledge of coding and brought value outside the places you'd traditionally expect?

What does useful mean to you? What does a useful tester mean to you? If coding is so important, what additional value do you get from a tester who can code over anyone else who can code? If there's nothing, why are you looking for a tester? If there's something, why couldn't a tester do that, and be supported by someone else who can code?

And coding is a broad church. Someone who's fluent in a specialist DSL based on Prolog for an AI application might be awful at C on an embedded micro-controller. Is it enough that the tester can hack together a temporary test rig out of Python and bash, or do you need someone who can architect and build a company-wide, end-to-end, full-stack, framework?

I feel like we could talk for hours. It's so refreshing to have this kind of conversation with an engaged stakeholder who cares to take the time to explore their position with the aim of getting a better understanding and outcome.

And that's one of the things a skilled tester can help to do ... without writing a single line of code.

Comments

Meet Me Halfway?

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . 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-- "Stop answering my questions with questions." Sure, I can do that. In return, please stop asking me questions so open to interpretation that any answ...

The Best Programmer Dan Knows

I was pairing with my friend Vernon at work last week, on a tool I've been developing. He was smiling broadly as I talked him through what I'd done because we've been here before. The tool facilitates a task that's time-consuming, inefficient, error-prone, tiresome, and important to get right. Vern knows that those kinds of factors trigger me to change or build something, and that's why he was struggling not to laugh out loud. He held himself together and asked a bunch of sensible questions about the need, the desired outcome, and the approach I'd taken. Then he mentioned a talk by Daniel Terhorst-North, called The Best Programmer I Know, and said that much of it paralleled what he sees me doing. It was my turn to laugh then, because I am not a good programmer, and I thought he knew that already. What I do accept, though, is that I am focussed on the value that programs can give, and getting some of that value as early as possible. He sent me a link to the ta...

Beginning Sketchnoting

In September 2017 I attended Ian Johnson 's visual note-taking workshop at DDD East Anglia . For the rest of the day I made sketchnotes, including during Karo Stoltzenburg 's talk on exploratory testing for developers (sketch below), and since then I've been doing it on a regular basis. Karo recently asked whether I'd do a Team Eating (the Linguamatics brown bag lunch thing) on sketchnoting. I did, and this post captures some of what I said. Beginning sketchnoting, then. There's two sides to that: I still regard myself as a beginner at it, and today I'll give you some encouragement and some tips based on my experience, to begin sketchnoting for yourselves. I spend an enormous amount of time in situations where I find it helpful to take notes: testing, talking to colleagues about a problem, reading, 1-1 meetings, project meetings, workshops, conferences, and, and, and, and I could go on. I've long been interested in the approaches I've evol...

How do I Test AI?

Recently a few people have asked me how I test AI. I'm happy to share my experiences, but I frame the question more broadly, perhaps something like this: what kinds of things do I consider when testing systems with artificial intelligence components . I freestyled liberally the first time I answered but when the question came up again I thought I'd write a few bullets to help me remember key things. This post is the latest iteration of that list. Caveats: I'm not an expert; what you see below is a reminder of things to pick up on during conversations so it's quite minimal; it's also messy; it's absolutely not a guide or a set of best practices; each point should be applied in context; the categories are very rough; it's certainly not complete. Also note that I work with teams who really know what they're doing on the domain, tech, and medical safety fronts and some of the things listed here are things they'd typically do some or all of. Testing ...

Don't Know? Find Out!

In What We Know We Don't Know , Hillel Wayne crisply summarises a handful of research findings about software development, describes how the research is carried out and reviewed and how he explores it, and contrasts those evidence-based results with the pronouncements of charismatic thought leaders. He also notes how and why this kind of research is hard in the software world. I won't pull much from the talk because I want to encourage you to watch it. Go on, it's reasonably short, it's comprehensible for me at 1.25x, and you can skip the section on Domain-Driven Design (the talk was at DDD Europe) if that's not your bag. Let me just give the same example that he opens with: research shows that most code reviews focus more on the first file presented to reviewers rather than the most important file in the eye of the developer. What we should learn: flag the starting and other critical files to receive more productive reviews. You never even thought about that possi...

My Adidas

If you've met me anywhere outside of a wedding or funeral, a snowy day, or a muddy field in the last 20 years you'll have seen me in Adidas Superstar trainers. But why? This post is for April Cools' Club . --00-- I'm the butt of many jokes in our house, but not having a good memory features prominently amongst them. See also being bald ("do you need a hat, Dad?"), wearing jeans that have elastane in them (they're very comfy but "oh look, he's got the jeggings on again!"), and finding joy in contorted puns ("no-one's laughing except you, you know that, right?") Which is why it's interesting that I have a very strong, if admittedly not complete, memory of the first time I heard Run DMC. Raising Hell , their third album, was released in the UK in May 1986 and I bought it pretty much immediately after hearing it on the evening show on Radio 1, probably presented by Janice Long, ...

Express, Listen, and Field

Last weekend I participated in the LLandegfan Exploratory Workshop on Testing (LLEWT) 2024, a peer conference in a small parish hall on Anglesey, north Wales. The topic was communication and I shared my sketchnotes and a mind map from the day a few days ago. This post summarises my experience report. Express, Listen, and Field Just about the most hands-on, practical, and valuable training I have ever done was on assertiveness with a local Cambridge coach, Laura Dain . In it she introduced Express, Listen, and Field (ELF), distilled from her experience across many years in the women’s movement, business, and academia. ELF: say your key message clearly and calmly, actively listen to the response, and then focus only on what is relevant to your needs. I blogged a little about it back in 2017 and I've been using it ever since. Assertiveness In a previous role, I was the manager of a test team and organised training for the whole ...

Not a Happy Place

A few months ago I stopped having therapy because I felt I had stabilised myself enough to navigate life without it. For the time being, anyway. I'm sure the counselling helped me but I couldn't tell you how and I've chosen not to look deeply into it. For someone who is usually pretty analytical this is perhaps an interesting decision but I knew that I didn't want to be second-guessing my counsellor, Sue, or mentally cross-referencing stuff that I'd researched while we were talking. And talk was what we mostly did, with Sue suggesting hardly any specific tools for me to try. One that she did recommend was finding a happy place to visualise, somewhere that I could be out of the moment for a moment to calm disruptive thoughts. (Something like this .) Surprisingly, I found that I couldn't conjure anywhere up inside my head. That's when I realised that I've always had difficulty seeing with my mind's eye but never called it out. If I try to imagine ev...

Software Sisyphus

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . 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-- "How can I possibly test 'all the stuff' every iteration?" Whoa! There's a lot to unpack there, so let me break it down a little: who is suggesting that "al...

Hiccupps

Search This Blog