I became a software tester in 2014, with no technical background.
I studied literature, languages and teaching. I'm pretty sure that lack of any engineering degree is the pure reason for my impostor syndrome (yes, it's 7 years later and I'm still dealing with it).
Since I don't have that much experience with Markdown editor, while writing this post, I wanted to add the link above and test, if it works.
The link did not open in the new tab/ new window. It did not work, because I somehow forgot the colon. When I pressed Back in the browser, being used to working on Google Drive or Sharepoint, I discovered that the draft of my first blog post was not automatically saved... so I had to start writing it again.
Instantly, I thought about J.K. Rowling - author of the best selling series of books of our century - Harry Potter - and her four-hour delayed train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The idea came fully formed into her mind for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry. She didn't have any pen and notebook, so she had to think about items and characters, and just remember. When she reached her flat, she began to write immediately. She later said:
I couldn't write it all down, so I had to think about it. And I think it is good. Back then, on this train, I had a lot of details on my mind, so if I didn't remember them, they probably weren't worth it.1
My mind works in mysterious ways. So, why starting a dev.to blog when being a manual software tester?
Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory in their extensive book on agile testing define the testing role as follows:
[...] we use the term tester to describe a person whose main activities revolve around testing and quality assurance. [...] We often use the word programmer to describe a person whose main activities revolve around writing production code. We don't intend that these terms sound narrow or insignificant. Programmers do more than just turn specification into program. We don't call them developers, because everyone involved in delivering software is a developer. Testers do more than just perform testing tasks.2
So... why not? :)
How do you define the roles of programmer and tester? Share it in the comment :)
1L. Fraser. Conversations with JK Rowling.
2L. Crispin, J. Gregory. Agile Testing: A Practical Guide For Testers And Agile Teams.
PS. When I finished this draft, I noticed, that you can see the first, supposedly unsaved, draft when you press the button "Write a post" in the menu on top.
The saved one is in your Dashboard. Bug?
Top comments (0)