News of the Weird: Testers Are Your Friends

I’m not sure why, but I’ve always had a different view of testers. Maybe it’s because the “tester” at my first job was the company secretary. Margaret was a very nice lady who kept the office running, and tried to teach a couple of young programmers how to behave professionally in front of customers. She also had a gift for finding any bug, no matter how obscure, in mere moments.

So that’s why I say testers are your friends. You may think the testers make you look bad by reporting trivial issues. But when customers are thrilled because they weren’t bothered by all those “little things” that QC made you fix, then you look great. See what I mean?

They could be geniuses who were so focused on making the AI insanely great that they didn’t notice those trivial things. And without “picky testers” pointing out the problems, you wound up finding them. And now you’re questioning the competency of the programmers.

By Burk Hufnagel