There’s power in sharing an opinion that welcomes a conversation. @fullsnacktester did this recently on Twitter and here on The Club chat.
Have you considered being bold and putting yourself out there?
Here are some reasons why:
It feels nice to get something from your head into words
You’ll feel courageous for doing it in public
You spark conversation and debate
Those conversations and debates may inform someone who is struggling to understand a concept or may reveal a completely new way of thinking for them
You inspire others to take the step to share in public
Now for sure, you might be thinking “Why the heck would someone wanna hear what I have to say? It’s been said before! I might get it wrong!”
What if you just took a punt and put stuff out there? You’ll never know unless you give it a go. You might surprise yourself.
And if some bad actors get involved then the community will have your back to support you. That’s the beauty of this community. There’s no place for edge lords, flamers, trolls and the like.
Share publically, like Ben here, and see what happens.
Some of my "Hot takes" from Twitter that I posted last night - c.c @simon_tomes:
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As a Tester, don't fall for thinking you understand how things work.
Make observations, dig deeper and make more observations, challenge your assumptions.
It isn't just developers illustrations about the software you need to break, it's also your own.
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Being a good lazy developer is hard work, it involves building tools and following patterns to avoid repetitive work.
It does not mean quick fixes, insufficient thinking and ignoring that bug, just because no one is shouting at you, yet
Quality saves time. Be good lazy.
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There will always be room for human testing, automation is only part of the challenge and you're probably asking the wrong questions if you think automation is your only answer.
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You'll never be done testing, but you should still ship that next release. Learn to live with good enough, and a good plan to fix things when they go wrong.
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Testing improves quality, because absence of testing is detrimental to quality.
I’m unsure how bold this text is, as I do not intend it as a hot take, but I used a provocative style.
At Twitter
Anyone who demands “all tests are green” must either give me any amount of time (including developers fixing the bugs) or expect my resignation/termination.
Alternatively, that I am lying to them and the tests are only superficially green.
Mould green
If “all tests are green” it is either the day before deployment and anything non-critical has been paused, or the team is missing tests.
In my opinion, the primary use for permanently green tests is as regression markers - their greenness is an indicator that core function is working as expected.
If the qualifier is “all high priority tests are green” that’s acceptable. So is “all core function tests are green”.
An unqualified “all tests are green” tempts me to add a test that will always fail, just to prove that it’s not possible to have all tests green - or that it’s not worth fixing all possible problems.
I call this “dropping a conversation grenade”, I learned so much early on from more experienced bods just by making observations, or asking questions. It can even be an interesting tactic to play devil’s advocate, too.
Drop the grenade, then sit back and learn! As a tester, you have that superpower!
