Forum Discussion

TanyaYatskovska's avatar
TanyaYatskovska
SmartBear Alumni (Retired)
6 years ago

[Day 5/5] APIvsUI Testing - Myth Buster: being a software tester is boring

Hello Guys,

 

Let's go myth-busting today!

Day 5 Task:

Myth to be busted: being a software tester is boring

 

I hear this myth quite often. At the same time, I like the feeling when I break something – this is never boring :) How about you?

Why do you enjoy your work?

What was the most interesting/unusual bug you’ve found?

What do you laugh about at work?

 

This is the last day of the event. Let’s enjoy it by sharing some funny and exciting stories about QA.

 

Participate in today’s conversation or in the previous ones. Also, remember that you can earn +2 points if you invite your colleague to the conversation or share the event on Twitter. Find more details in the description of the bonus tasks below.

>> Track the current score

 

Spoiler

Bonus Tasks

Accomplish any of the bonus tasks to earn more points:

  1. +2 points - Invite your colleague to the competition.

Mention a nickname of this person by using @ in the competition’s daily topics. You can invite as many people as you wish. NOTE: A person you invite should be a new Community member registered after the event start.

 

  1. +2 points – Make a post on social media about your participation in the competition.

Your post should contain: @SmartBear, the #APIvsUITesting hashtag and the link to your comment in the Community.

Simple tweet: API Testing vs UI testing! Which one is more important? Join me in the @SmartBear Community to talk about this: https://bit.ly/2HEZ5U4 #APIvsUITesting

 

Event Rules

  1. Leave your comments on a conversation of the day. 1 comment = 1 point to the team score.
  2. The competition will be held on March 25-29.
  3. Join the competition any day and participate in any daily conversations.
  4. Feel free to leave comments for any teams.
  5. Rewards! A team with the biggest score will win. Active participants from each team will be rewarded.
APIvsUI
  • avidCoder's avatar
    avidCoder
    Super Contributor
    6 years ago

    In my view "Software testing is not at all boring". If you really understand the basic software testing knowledge and its steps. I'd say "Software testing is harder than development". If you don't believe me, below points will make sure that.

     

    1. For any software to test, you need broader set of skills. You must have the manual knowledge, writing your own set for testing scripts, On the top of that you need to create a framework for the scripts to handle and maintain it properly, implementing them to CI tool, check where mock tests are required, write the UI tests, write the integration tests, end to end tests, And if you are really unlucky, write the unit tests also. And test strategy, planning documentation is extra effort.
    2. You are less involved and expectation is more. Why because after the developers develops the code, it comes to testing phase and now testers have to test it properly so that there shouldn't be any bug in production environment. And that's a huge responsibility.
    3. You are always outnumbered. Generally the developers and testers ratio in Agile team is 3:1. So, there are lot of work for testers to support 2-3 developers in a team.

    If you definitely has a team with lot of enthusiastic and energetic people surrounded by you. You'll really enjoy the team. In my view, the developers and testers should always create a great bond b/w them and I am really lucky to have such a team. Developers would help us to resolve our issues. And this is what I enjoy the most. 

     

    Most interesting bug, I have found is, I am working for a retail and ecommerce client and I examined an error message that appeared when entering the wrong credit card number. And after entering invalid credit card number several times, the Thank You .. !!! page got loaded with message "Your order is confirmed". :)

     

    What I laugh at is :- The developers/programmers tries to "How to develop it, how to write code" and we testers are interested in "How to break it", so that again it should go back to developers" :D :D :D.

     

    And you cannot do anything, to survive you have to test properly. so that it doesn't have any bugs. And for that you always are interested in breaking the codes. :P

    • avidCoder's avatar
      avidCoder
      Super Contributor
      6 years ago

      Last but not the least, if your attitude is to put your heart into anything you do, then anything becomes fun and enjoyable. Software tetsing fun, you're detective in software engineering process. Today, the perception is that the word tester doesn't look glamarous and interesting as the word developer to many people outside. May be calling the role as "software detectives" can chnage the mindset of people towards testing.

  • avidCoder's avatar
    avidCoder
    Super Contributor
    6 years ago

    Anybody form the API team has to say anything about the below mentioned points made by me? Any comment will be appreciated.

    • JoostDG's avatar
      JoostDG
      Frequent Contributor
      6 years ago

      Haha, nice one avidCoder , I like the "software detective" title, it's indeed a better description.

      Why do you enjoy your work?

      For me testing always was a link between business and IT. I started in the banking industry as an employee of a bank, but after a year I wanted to leave because I became too frustrated with the shortcomings of the applications we had to work with.

      As a tester, you should know the business logic even better than the business people, as you as tester need to come up with the edge cases that makes them scratch their head. Also, as a tester you cannot just be apathic towards IT, as you need to dig deep, understand the way something is build in order to be able to break it. It's always a mixed feeling when detecting a bug. On the one hand you know that release targets might not be met due to this, on the other hand those bugs proof your needed. It's always important to be tactful as those same bugs might proof (or feel like proof) that the developers did a lousy job. But in the end, everyone in a team needs to understand those dynamics and that all those efforts are bundled to deliver a (nice) piece of software or application! A go-live is always a proud moment.

      What was the most interesting/unusual bug you’ve found?

      Specific for API testing it was interesting to see that an authentication failed whenever there was a certain load. During load customers could see the data of other customers, which is ofcourse something you want to avoid at any cost. Outside API testing: One customer could logon to an application to see his contact details. For 1 customer (test data was a scrambled copy of production) the number of contact details was that big that he page crashed when he visited it... But not only did it crash for him, but any other customers who wanted to load that page afterwards could no longer reach his/her contact details anymore. So one person was able to make somthing crash for all other customers!

      What do you laugh about at work?

      I guess what often happens is: As a team you look for "outside" enemies to bound and feel united. Might be another vendor, or other project team....you may laugh at their bad code implementations for instance. Or it may even be "those people from business", that do not have a clue how a computer works. All in good fun ofcourse. 

  • Marramreddy's avatar
    Marramreddy
    Occasional Contributor
    6 years ago

    API testing is fun and interesting. As I find defect after defect I feel like and get boost to fly.

     

    Good rapport with development team adds more fun to our work but no compromise on quality. :smileyhappy: