Beautiful Testing

Software Testing Movements

More interesting consequences come about when we acknowledge that software development is a fundamentally creative process and not in any way related to manufacturing or engineering. For example, when we become free to question the state of the practice, we are also free to change the state of the practice.

Good software testers do not validate function. Their tools do that for them. Good software testers make aesthetic judgments about the suitability of the software for various purposes, exactly as does the editor of a book or the leader of a band or the director of a play. Good software testers supply critical information about value to people who care about that value, in a role similar to that of a book reviewer or a movie critic.

Great software testers make aesthetic judgments about the suitability of entire approaches to software development itself. Consider the genesis of the Watir and Selenium tools for testing web applications. These are great examples of successful ongoing projects that were started in reaction to the poor state of the software testing practice at the time, and that are more and more defining the state of the software testing practice today and into the future.

In the late 1990s there were almost no free software testing tools, especially for user-interface and browser-based testing. And the proprietary tools available would (and still do) frequently break down in the face of a real UI. James Bach’s article “Test Automation ...