Flashback

I had a bit of a surreal experience this week. One of the groups I work with sent some mail asking me to review an internal report. They noticed an issue and had made some changes. I checked out the report, but it was incorrect. I let them know and got back to work. A few minutes later, I received more email asking me to try again. I did – the report was still broken. This could have gone on forever, but I just went home instead. Eventually they asked someone else, and after a few more iterations, the reports were fixed.

How can any self respecting developer care so little about quality? I was just starting to think that the days of throwing code “over the wall” to testers were long gone. Hey coder-boy - as a tester (or a user), it’s not my job to make sure your basic functionality works – that’s your job. I’m embarrassed for you that you expect me to do this.

I don’t know who reads this blog, but if your job is to “make stuff”, then make sure your stuff works before you give it to a tester (or a user). If you’re a tester, stop accepting broken code from your counterparts. It’s not that hard of a concept…or at least I hope not…