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Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

23 replies on 2 pages. Most recent reply: Mar 6, 2007 11:37 PM by Andy Dent

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Flat View: This topic has 23 replies on 2 pages [ « | 1 2 ]

Anit Agarwal

Posts: 7
Nickname: anit
Registered: Feb, 2007

Re: Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

Posted: Mar 1, 2007 7:29 PM

Hi Raoul,

thanks for recognizing the quality of a good experience in Test/QA. I think it would be hard to staff Dev from QA (internal transfer in an organization) because of prevailing perception issues about Developers being inherently technically superior or having a higher interest level in the field of Software Development than QA staff.

I would have to agree that this perception is based on some degree of reality. QA is a good starting / entry point for junior developers who don't have years of real-world experience under their belt. That said, QA is also a great place to build future managers, executives, and directors.

David Vydra

Posts: 60
Nickname: dvydra
Registered: Feb, 2004

Re: Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

Posted: Mar 1, 2007 9:03 PM

I totally disagree that junior developers should start in QA. Junior developers should me mentored by senior developers, if they have talent to be developers in the first place. I have seenn Engineer in Test positions for folks who want to focus on verification and test automation, but that is not what is typically referred to as QA.

My core belief is that folks who like to build stuff should build stuff. Developer testing is about driving design; it certainly does some testing, but its not the same testing as in QA.

> I would have to agree that this perception is based on
> some degree of reality. QA is a good starting / entry
> point for junior developers who don't have years of
> real-world experience under their belt.

Anit Agarwal

Posts: 7
Nickname: anit
Registered: Feb, 2007

Re: Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

Posted: Mar 2, 2007 11:45 AM

> I totally disagree that junior developers should start in
> QA. Junior developers should me mentored by senior
> developers, if they have talent to be developers in the
> first place. I have seenn Engineer in Test positions for
> folks who want to focus on verification and test
> automation, but that is not what is typically referred to
> as QA.
>
> My core belief is that folks who like to build stuff
> should build stuff. Developer testing is about driving
> design; it certainly does some testing, but its not the
> same testing as in QA.
>
> > I would have to agree that this perception is based on
> > some degree of reality. QA is a good starting / entry
> > point for junior developers who don't have years of
> > real-world experience under their belt.

Hi David.

I like to build stuff. I had a 3.7 GPA, Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science at Cornell University. I built stuff at Almaden Research Center for a year and a half after that. And then I experienced the Test/ QA world and experienced things that I am certain will make me a better developer. I think developers have to be open-minded about who they recruit into their ranks, and view things in terms of productivity, efficiency, and results, rather than subjective criteria like "who's got talent"

Best,
--Anit

Anit Agarwal

Posts: 7
Nickname: anit
Registered: Feb, 2007

Re: Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

Posted: Mar 2, 2007 2:21 PM

But David, I definitely agree with some of your sentiments -- all developers should be passionate about their work and about building stuff. Any developer that isn't should find another line of work.

And mentorship is a crucial element towards becoming a better person and a better developer.

Best,
--Anit

Raoul Duke

Posts: 127
Nickname: raoulduke
Registered: Apr, 2006

Re: Re: And another thing...

Posted: Mar 2, 2007 3:37 PM

Oh, hey, can I also get involved in improving documentation? I've got some ideas there, too (seriously). ;-)

Anit Agarwal

Posts: 7
Nickname: anit
Registered: Feb, 2007

Re: Re: And another thing...

Posted: Mar 2, 2007 5:19 PM

What do people think of Doxygen? I think its pretty cool if used correctly.

nguyen Phuc Hai

Posts: 2
Nickname: hai1979
Registered: Feb, 2007

Re: Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

Posted: Mar 5, 2007 8:39 AM

I have write two posts in my blog about the QC role also the developer's responsibilities, they are http://www.haiphucnguyen.net/blog/?p=32 and http://www.haiphucnguyen.net/blog/?p=30. As my opinion, the QC's responsibility is not checking the wrong code caused by lacking unit test but they verify whether the functionality operate well base on client's requirement. The responsibility of developer is perform unit test. We should not create more position that will do what developer must do.

Alberto Savoia

Posts: 95
Nickname: agitator
Registered: Aug, 2004

Re: Developer Testing Masters and Brain Surgeons

Posted: Mar 5, 2007 9:18 AM

>We should not create more position that
>will do what developer must do.

A lot of people seem to be getting a message that's the exact opposite of what I intended - I guess I should have been more clear.

This DTM is not a position that "will do what developer must do" but, instead, a position to make sure that developers start doing what they should have been doing all along in terms of unit testing.

The way I see it, we have gone down the wrong path with developers and testing; by not giving testing adequate coverage in computer science education, putting too much responsibility on QA's shoulders, etc.

We need to get back on track and the DTM position is to help developers, and their organizations, get back on track. After decades of neglect and billions of lines of untestable/hard-to-test code, we can't simply snap our fingers and expect the average developer to make a 180 degree turn. Help is needed to make that change happen. The best case scenario is that a few years from now, such a position will not be required because everyone is back on track ... but I am not holding my breath :-).

Alberto

Andy Dent

Posts: 165
Nickname: andydent
Registered: Nov, 2005

Re: Re: And another thing...

Posted: Mar 6, 2007 11:37 PM

> What do people think of Doxygen? I think its pretty cool
> if used correctly.

Not sure what you mean by correctly but I've been a fan for years. http://www.oofile.com.au/oofile_ref/html/index.html

I also use DOT directly to do diagrams, which I include in Doxygen docs and am currently documenting an architecture using Python to describe its connections, generating DOT and Doxygen code to display all the scenarios, data flows and their context.

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