[134] in Humor
HUMOR: To test or...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Fri Mar 11 14:16:21 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 94 14:12:36 EST
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 1994 01:45:22 -0700
From: Espacionaute Spiff domaine! <matossian@aries.colorado.edu>
Subject: the s/w tester's lament
Forwarded-by: JR Oldroyd <jr@opal.com>
Forwarded-by: dm@hri.com
``The tester's soliloquy'', from Boris Beizer,
_Software testing techniques_, 1983, Von Nostrand Reinhold,
New York.
To test, or not to test; that is the question
Whether 'tis nobler for the tester's soul to suffer
The barbs and snickers of outraged designers,
Or to take arms against a sea of failures,
And by testing, end them? To try: to test; to test
Yet mor; and by such tests to say we end
All software and the thousand myriad faults
That it is heir to --- 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To try: to test;
To test; perchance to work; ay, there's the rub;
For if it works, what tasks may come
When we have passed the final code
Must give us pause. Ther's the fact
That makes calamitous too good a test;
For who would copious errors bear,
The printouts long, the endless loops,
The pangs of cracked software, the work's delay,
The indolence of labor, and the spurns
The tester, unmerited, from the coder takes,
When we ourselves, by passing all routines,
Might our quietus make? Who would insults bear,
Or grunt and sweat under a blearly light,
But that the dread of testing ended,
In whose wake no more debugging lurks,
Makes us rather bear those ills we suffer,
Than seek employment of an honest kind.
Thus expedience doth makes cowards of us all;
And thus the routine's resolution
Is studied o'er with the pale cast of doubt,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With grinding fits, they jump back to a halt
And lose the name of action.
