Git commit 1.1.0

What does it mean to be a tester?

There are a few ways to approach this question:

Real-life: A ‚tester’ is someone who is responsible for testing things in their company and gets paid for it.

Official: Quoting ISTQB, testerzy.pl, and Adam Roman:
a) Tester – a qualified professional involved in testing a module or system.
b) Tester (English: tester) – a qualified professional involved in testing a module, system, or other artifact of the software development process.

My own: A tester is someone who wants to know how something works and is not afraid to break it. And after the fact is able to suggest what can be done to improve it.

At the beginning, I must admit that the 1st and 3rd definitions are my own invention. But I won’t dwell on the first one, why bother?
As for the third one: I sincerely believe that my definition best describes the mindset that should accompany a tester who wants to develop. You’ve probably heard many times in various trainings/lectures phrases like: ‚who does nothing, doesn’t make mistakes’, ‚failure is a step to success’, ‚step out of your comfort zone’, etc. And as usual, hearing such clichés, I want to facepalm, but unfortunately, I have to admit that there is something to it. In testing, such an approach is also necessary.
And here comes another question: How to learn this?
But the answer to this will unfortunately seem a bit sad: You can’t, or at least not to a large extent. And that means that, in my opinion, our beautiful IT market is completely wrong and we recruit the wrong people to be testers. (but I’ll write more about this in another article, because it seems like a topic worth developing as well).

So what does it mean to be a tester specifically?
Simply put: You are a tester regardless of whether you work in IT or not.
You just are a tester.
You are a tester when you walk down the street near a fire hydrant and stop to see how energy is transferred and then think about how it works for the rest of the way.
You are a tester when you walk past an old house and see a gate that opens in both directions and you have to take a look at what kind of hinge is used there.
You are a tester when your bike breaks down and before you give it to a professional, you try to take off the wheels and unscrew all the screws yourself.
You are a tester when you hear a strange sound and pause a movie on Netflix to find out where it’s coming from (even if it takes 15 minutes).
You are a tester when curiosity wins over reason.

And now, if someone were to analyze this, they could come to a simple conclusion:
A tester is a child.
And a professional tester is a child who didn’t fully grow up, but has to pay taxes…
And going back to the question ‚how to learn this’, it’s enough not to forget it.

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