February 2010
Beginner
255 pages
6h 10m
English
Content preview from 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 60. News of the Weird: Testers Are Your Friends
WHETHER THEY CALL THEMSELVES Quality Assurance or Quality Control, many programmers call them Trouble. In my experience, programmers often have an adversarial relationship with the people who test their software. “They’re too picky” and “They want everything perfect” are common complaints. Sound familiar?
I’m not sure why, but I’ve always had a different view of testers. Maybe it’s because the “tester” at my first job was the company secretary. Margaret was a very nice lady who kept the office running, and tried to teach a couple of young programmers how to behave professionally in front of customers. She also had a gift for finding any bug, no matter how obscure, in mere moments.
Back then, I was working on a program written by an accountant who thought he was a programmer. Needless to say, it had some serious problems. When I thought I had a piece straightened out, Margaret would try to use it, and, more often than not, it would fail in some new way after just a few keystrokes. It was at times frustrating and embarrassing, but she was such a pleasant person that I never thought to blame her for making me look bad. Eventually, the day came when Margaret was able to cleanly start the program, enter an invoice, print it, and shut it down. I was thrilled. Even better, when we installed it on our customer’s machine, it ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.