Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Despite temporary angst, we want the tester who has the bad luck of doing something that finds the errors in our computer programs.

A while back, my grandson was writing a program on our kitchen computer. He was writing some type of game where you picked a number and something happened on the screen. My granddaughter tried the game, i.e., she tested it. Note, at the time, both were teenagers, whatever that implies.

My granddaughter picked a number that caused the game to … well, let’s use a technical term … the game crashed and burned.

“Ah,” proclaimed my grandson, “You are an unlucky tester. By luck, you picked the wrong number for this game.” My grandson has a way of explaining failures as the result of someone else’s actions. Note, he is still a teenager, whatever that implies.

I joined the conversation with some quip about wanting to have unlucky testers to help find the problems in a program. Also, perhaps my granddaughter was an excellent instead of an unlucky tester. Chuckles ensued as well as the two of them studied and changed the source code so that the program would run even when facing unlucky people.

I have written computer programs. Much blood, sweat, and tears go into that endeavor. Discovering that all that effort included mistakes is not fun. I have tested computer programs written by others after they poured blood, sweat, and tears into them. They weren’t happy when I showed there were errors in their endeavors. In the end, there always seems to be some sort of end, the program was better after my testing and their angst.

We want unlucky testers. We want someone who walks in, tries something that never occurred to us, and makes the whole thing crash and burn. Computer programs are simulations. All the crashing and burning are simulated as well. Better to have that now than later.

One problem is that now and later don’t remove the angst of having to bleed, sweat, and cry more tears while fixing things found by unlucky testers. Still, we survive and strive to do better.