I came across this quote in Managing the Unmanageable, attributed to Doug Linder:
A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street.
It made me chuckle – churlishly, childishly – as I imagined a developer crossing testing off their list because each time they’d happened to cross the street they’d implemented they’d checked it was working. Well, perhaps that some aspect of it wasn’t not working, at that time, for that person, etc etc.
Reflecting as I write this, I wonder if I’d been having a bad day…
Anyway, I offered the quote to the Test team at Linguamatics yesterday, along with mince pies, and posed a different question as part of our annual festive Testing Can be Fun session (see also The So in Absolute, Last Orders, Further Reading, Testing is Like Making Love):
What might a “good” tester say or do, when encountering a one-way street?
Ten minutes allowed, and as many mince pies as you can eat. Stick your answers in the comments if you like.
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