"Oh, Q/A. Everybody tortures the guys in Q/A. It's like being hazed for a living."
JPod - Douglas Coupland

I was going to write something long and meaningful about finding this quote in JPod, but I started in my new job this week and it has all been kind of draining. So instead, just some of the notes I’ve made for this entry over the week:

• Testers hardly ever feature in fiction (books / TV / films), unless I have been reading / watching completely the wrong fiction (and I read around 100 books a year, say 75% fiction, plus watch a lot of telly)

• The only other mention of testers I remember in fiction was an episode of CSI Miami, where apparently somebody didn’t “need some mouth-breather telling me what’s wrong in my code”

• Actually, this doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe I just lack community spirit? But see also below

• The testing community has never, that I have seen, got anxious about the fact that we are portrayed in fiction as mouth-breathing torture victims.

• Possibly this is because so many are trying to prove themselves to their colleagues that they don’t have time to care about what the wider world thinks. But I like to think it’s because we’re above it.

• This is completely the opposite reaction to what the Science Fiction fandom community has in a similar situation. (In another one of my alternative lives, I lurk at the edges of SF fandom)

• Testing as an activity is in lots of fiction, just not software testing done by people called testers. Two examples from TV:

• we have the Mythbusters, who basically design and execute engineering tests. The engineering they do well, the testing they do badly - I understand the restrictions they face, but I can’t stop myself shouting at the telly. You can’t prove something after just three tests ignoring all but a handful of factors!

• then there is also CSI itself. The episodes I like best as a tester are the ones where they look back over their earlier work, and find new interpretations of the results that they got. I think that maybe they are also careful enough in the language they use to describe what they have found (except for David Caruso, who needs a punch in the face, but I digress).

• People who are big fans of either or both of the above shows have, without a trace of irony, told me that they find testing boring

• And as an aside, I get so irritated with people who don’t question themselves often enough to see the irony there...

And that’s all I have the energy for.