Deep testing — testing that maximizes the change of finding every elusive bug that matters — is the kind of testing work that engages and motivates serious testers. Developers tend to prefer shallow testing that doesn’t disrupt the developer’s mindset and the developer’s focus on getting the danged product built.
(Before anyone gets too upset, note that the shallowness of shallow testing is a feature, not a bug. There’s lots more about that here.)
In the world around Rapid Software Testing, we often point out that developers aren’t interested in doing or even learning about the kind of testing we’re interested in.
That’s a generalization, but not a completely grotesque one. There are a lot more developers than testers in the world. Most people who sign up for our classes are testers. If developers were genuinely interested in learning about testing, one would think we’d have a lot more programmers and development managers signing up for our classes.
(Are you a developer? There are Rapid Software Testing classes coming up. Prove me wrong!)
Then along comes Marius Francu, a developer and development lead currently at Siemens, who is a prominent exception to the generalization. Marius has acted as a peer advisor and teaching assistant in Rapid Software Testing classes for several years now, both with me and with James Bach. In that role, Marius has acted as a curator of references and insights that add light and colour to the class. He has also contributed perspectives from the point of view of a programmer, a manager, and a systems thinker.
At the South Eastern Europe Testing Conference (SEETest), I had the good fortune to meet Marius face-to-face for the first time. His goal was to interview me for the video series that he has been producing, Testing Voices.
Mary Alton (my wife) nudged us to probe an important issue: why was Marius, a programmer, so galvanized about Rapid Software Testing? The result was a role reversal, in which I became the interviewer. In this video, Marius shares his perspective on why RST is important to him, and why he believes it should be important to other programmers as well.
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