Ugly Babies: Another Reason Why We Need Testers

Posted by Ben Simo

... I got on the train ... And I noticed that the woman across from me in the aisle had her baby with her. Ugly baby. Ugly baby.

From the other end of the coach comes this guy and he was very drunk and he was staring at the baby. ... And the guy said, "I'm looking at that ugly baby. That's a horrible looking baby lady. Where'd you get that baby from?"

And the woman said, "I don't have to take that!" And she snatched the emergency cord and the train came to a screeching halt, and the conductor came running in.

Now this was his moment. At this moment he represented the Pennsylvania Railroad. And he said, "what's going on here?"

And the woman said, "This man just insulted me. I don't have to spend my money and ride this railroad and be insulted. I'd rather walk."

And the conductor said, "calm down! Calm down! Madame there's nothing, nothing that the Pennsylvania Railroad will not do to avoid having situations such as this. Perhaps it would be more to your convenience if we were to ... let you sit somewhere else in the coach. And as a small compensation from the railroad ... we are going to give you a free meal; and maybe we'll find a banana for your monkey."

- Flip Wilson


We are like parents when it comes to our creations: we can be blind to ugly.

I am a believer in developer testing. Good unit testing is essential to good software. Practices like Test Driven Development (TDD) help ensure that software works from the start. Anyone that's been in the software development business for long knows that the cost of defects exponentially grows as a project progresses. Preventing and finding defects early should be a goal in every software project. Early testing by developers does not remove the need for testing by someone other than the coder.

There are a number of reasons for "independent" testing. These reasons often include references to requirements testing, end-to-end testing, integration testing, system testing, and independent verification. These reasons focus on testing things as complete systems or from a user's viewpoint. I have another reason: Creators can be blind to ugly.

Creators have an emotional attachment to their creation. This attachment can get in the way of objective evaluation. It is difficult to be both creator and critic. It is as if creativity and critique are opposite sides of a scale. We can be both, but increasing one can harm the other. Creators need to balance the two without allowing self-criticism to hamper creativity.

I think its good for creators to have an emotional attachment to the product of their thoughts and labor. External critics can help a creator improve their creation without stifling creative thinking.

Creating and critiquing are separate skills. When one group can focus on one and another group can focus on the other: together they are stronger (if the critics are more tactful than the drunk in Flip's story).

At least that's my opinion. Now I open the floor to the critics. :)