I often work with good developers and one thing I notice about all good developers is that they seem to love the idea of building robots.

Bad developers see problems and sit there waiting for someone to come up with a solution in enough detail for the developer to transcribe the solution into code, much like an old fashioned typist takes dictation and types it onto a page.
So if a bad developer noticed that their house needed cleaning, then he or she would simply complain that someone should clean it. Then if you point out that it is their house that needs cleaning then they will either claim management won’t let them clean or that the problem is more complex than it seems cannot be solved.

In fact even if you ask them to try and clean, they will just start to reveal that cleaning is “more than vacuuming” and could involve the removal of micro-particles that only quantum physicists could possible manipulate. Indeed, they will contend, it is unlikely that anyone really cleans their house and the only practical solution would be to upgrade to a new cleaner house.

But good developers are different. A good developer will notice that the house needs cleaning, work out that actually cleaning it less fun than designing a better way to clean houses and immediately begin working on the design for a new robot.
Continue reading “Manual regression testing may not suck so badly after all”