Wednesday, September 19, 2007
If a test passes in a forest, and no one sees it...
Pradeep Soundararajan is a colleague of me and of James Bach. Pradeep would say he's a student, but in this case the student has surpassed this teacher. Pradeep writes and tests and thinks with passion. In a recent blog post, he came up with this gem:
"...it is not a test that finds a bug but it is a human that finds a bug and a test plays a role in helping the human find it."
That's very insightful. It puts the tester, rather than the test, at the centre of testing. It underscores the idea that we produce and perform tests with the intention of revealing information, but until some human observes and evaluates some outcome of the test, the test is silent. It also emphasizes that a test might provide us with the opportunity to observe one bug or several.
Bravo, Pradeep. I'll be quoting that a lot.
"...it is not a test that finds a bug but it is a human that finds a bug and a test plays a role in helping the human find it."
That's very insightful. It puts the tester, rather than the test, at the centre of testing. It underscores the idea that we produce and perform tests with the intention of revealing information, but until some human observes and evaluates some outcome of the test, the test is silent. It also emphasizes that a test might provide us with the opportunity to observe one bug or several.
Bravo, Pradeep. I'll be quoting that a lot.
