QA? We don't need no stinking QA • Hacker News Board

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#21

Post by losethos » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 3:46 PM UTC

How good are you at isolating and repeating bugs. That would be valuable. Most of my "bugs" are intentional, but I got this one...

Pretty pointless.

I don't think about CottonTail(robot milling machibne) or Simstructure. I boot LoseThos maybe 15 minutes a day or less, now.

The fuck is God's problem... lemme see... tune in toyko.

God says... C:\TEXT\WALDEN.TXT

tnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller r

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#22

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

absconditus wrote: post #19

I have been working in QA for a few years now and have made several observations. * The people who are good at QA usually have the skills to work as a developer. QA is generally not as desirable as development to a young developer, so why do it? * Many QA people are almost completely useless and exist just to generate paperwork so that the company can cover its ass. Warning signs for bad QA people seem to be certific…

[deleted]

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#23

Post by hvs » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 3:49 PM UTC

absconditus wrote: post #19

I have been working in QA for a few years now and have made several observations. * The people who are good at QA usually have the skills to work as a developer. QA is generally not as desirable as development to a young developer, so why do it? * Many QA people are almost completely useless and exist just to generate paperwork so that the company can cover its ass. Warning signs for bad QA people seem to be certific…

For the most part I agree with you. I will say that I have met those in QA over the years that may or may not have been good developers, but were phenomenal testers and truly enjoyed their work. They loved being able to break things (seriously), but they also were great at being able to document how to recreate issues and explaining it to the developers.

Sadly, those people are not as common as they should be. There's honestly a huge market opportunity for high quality testers and it's not something that requires years of training. Heck, maybe we can solve the unemployment problem by just convincing companies to care more about quality software! ... probably not, though.

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#24

Post by jfricker » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 3:58 PM UTC

I used to run a QA department for a large e-commerce company and love what this article has to say. Nothing gets executive attention like putting a dollar value on downtime (like $1k per minute on a slow day).

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#25

Post by jfricker » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 3:59 PM UTC

YetAnotherAlias wrote: post #8

I don't have much to add to the discussion. I just want to vent a bit of frustration. I came in this morning and found out that 7 of my co-workers were just laid off. We are a 30 people company so thats quite a big deal. And some of my good co-workers in QA were axed. I guess some management guy thought QA was unnecessary. Oh this seems to start to look like 2008 all over again!

Sorry to hear that! Sounds like time to look for a new job as the best of days are behind you now.

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#26

Post by jfricker » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 4:04 PM UTC

dustingetz wrote: post #14

quoting Linus: "There really are only two acceptable models of development: 'think and analyze' or 'years and years of testing on thousands of machines'"[1] i would never say that "we don't need no stinking QA", but i do believe that teams who live by "think and analyse" need QA a lot less than teams who don't. [1] http://www.dustingetz.com/linus-think-and-analyze-motherfuck...

The context of that is entirely different than a "do we need QA" context. "Think and Analyze" is an abstract philosophy, not a process for engineering.

I'd say that if you have a T&A team it would be great to measure and publish your defect rate. Of course, if you just have better than average coders, then naturally your defect rate can be low.

But even a low defect rate does not preclude having a formal QA process. Even the best coders in the world can ship the wrong product when the specifications are wrong.

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#27

Post by MartinCron » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #7

On the other hand, I've seen QA groups who do no QA at all. Instead, they do frameworks. "We need a test framework" are terrifying words to me. It means that I (the dev) will have no one at my back. It means that tests will be written by junior QA engineers (the senior ones are off writing and maintaining the framework, right?). It means that I am responsible for my own tests, because /no one/ else besides the custom…

It means that I (the dev) will have no one at my back.

Everyone should always code and test their code like that, right?

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#28

Post by Shenglong » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

Question:

When you're doing QA on a product, do you worry about border cases? I found quite a few bugs related to time syncing and inadequate safeguards in a project I worked on - but they were difficult to reproduce without a macro.

I'm still not sure whether people were happy or angry with me, for reporting all those bugs.

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#29

Post by pavelkaroukin » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 4:14 PM UTC

While I agree we need QA (today), I would like to see different expectations.. Expectations that over time we will need less and less QA work.

Re: QA? We don't need no stinking QA

#30

Post by ecaradec » Fri, Sep 23, 2011, 4:28 PM UTC

I worked with the Windows QA of XBox for a while and it was totally awesome to have super detailed information on bugs, where they occured and how often, with core dumps and stacks in case of crashes.

Users and bosses thinks they have done more than their duty when they said you that "it doesn't work", "nothing work" without more details. You have to run after them to get more context and detailed information.

I love QA.