Friday 12 December 2014

What does a Software do? A software tester walks into a bar...


  • Orders a beer
  • Orders ten beers 
  • Orders 2.15 billion beers
  • Orders -1 beers
  • Orders a nothing 
  • Orders a cat
  • Tries to leave without paying


This joke is prevalent among the Software Testing community - and it serves as an important lesson to anyone wondering what Software Testers actually do for a living.

Your garden variety Tester will ensure that a piece of software will behave in certain expected ways - take the joke for example - it's not unreasonable that a bar will have beer for sale, it's also not unreasonable that the same bar will have up to and including ten beers for sale, maybe a round of drinks for a team celebrating something.

It's also a Software Testers job to ensure that software handles errors correctly, so when a piece of software meets an unexpected result (such as ordering 2.15 billion beers at a bar) the software responds with a correct reply - it's the difference between the barman explaining that they don't have that many beers in stock and the barman spontaneously combusting on the spot.  That's a little graphic perhaps but it's still relevant)

A Software Tester should also think about 'fringe' scenarios for the software.  What *would* happen if you ordered -1 beer? or nothing? or indeed a cat? Whilst the joke still remains one of my favourite and sufficient methods of explaining my job it's also laced with interesting hints to what lengths Software Testers need to go to sometimes.

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