开发人员们，测试员们正在测试你们的耐心？

开发人员们，测试员们正在测试你们的耐心？

作者：Sonja Thompson
翻译：PurpleEndurer，2009-06-09 第1版
标签: 开发人员, 测试人员, Sonja Thompson

稍事休息后我回来办公桌前，发现收件箱中有几封新邮件。其中一个名字立即引起了我的注意。这是一位同事的名字，他被安排测试我写的一个脚本。收件箱中有他在六分钟内发来的三封电子邮件。第一封邮件只是说“那个脚本不能工作。”从邮戳看，第二封是两分钟后发的，“我不能让那个脚本运行！但现在看起来产生垃圾!”并且在第三封中惊呼，“拉维，一切都好，我正在看错误目录！”

虽然我被这个测试员发出这些消息的仓促给惹恼了，但我也因为这这个一系列电子邮件而偷乐了一阵子。“测试员会尽力打破一天的单调， ”我想。

然而，玩笑之余，如果您是开发人员，我相信您遇到一些测试员，他们似乎将测试定义为“测试开发人员。 ”他们的字典似乎如下所示：

测试 名词 测试开发人员或其耐心的艺术

你把程序发给他们，他们尽职尽责地把程序投入测试——通过双击可执行文件或在命令行输入可执行文件的名称，并按下回车键。然后来个快速回应， “拉维，程序不能正常工作！ ”

当然，出错的可能是一个逗号，一个冒号或一些其它简单的事情，当你追踪足球评分而不是代码时犯下的。在这种情况下，我敢肯定你会相当地后悔、内疚，并尽力弥补。然而，同样常见或可能更多的是，困难出现在测试人员注视着程序执行或程序的结果以外的东西的时候。

我碰到过许多例子，测试部门的一些简单行动可以帮助他或她通过所报告的障碍，或至少解释程序明显失败的原因。这包括检查看看系统是否有合理的可用磁盘空间，阅读您让程序在运行过程中遇到问题时显示的信息——您是考虑周到的开发人员——或者查看日志文件，这些毕竟是想要用户阅读的。

测试员依照开发人员来思考所有可能的错误并设陷。他也盼着开发人员会创造出足够的踪迹，以便能追踪错误，回溯其原因。然而，我相信测试员职责至少有一部分是尽可能地尝试正确识别问题及其原因。

测试员最起码应该准确地报告测试时遇到的问题。通常一个程序，或者一组程序，在结束前会贯行几个中间步骤。如果程序运行出错，测试员可以尝试判断哪些步骤在异常终止前完成了。这不仅给开发人员提供了什么出错的线索，而且有助于加快错误的解决，以及开发和测试周期的完成。

除了与测试员偶尔缺乏合作外，开发人员可能遇到测试员似乎缺少一些基本技能的情况。一个搞开发的同事曾经告诉我他与一个不熟练的测试员的体会。该项目正在UNIX上测试运行。它包括一系列的程序和UNIX shell脚本，程序和脚本运行序列封装在专属工具包内。当测试员遇到问题时，联系我的同事寻求协助，得到的反馈建议为：最佳选择可能是逐步跟踪该包并尝试按顺序手动运行每个程序或脚本。当听到测试员回答说： “我要如何手动运行脚本呢？ ”时，他惊呆了。

这可能看起来似乎不象，但我确实同情测试员们。他们有一个并不令人羡慕的职业，要反复运行相同的程序，寻找可能永远不会出现的错误。并且当开发人员犯晕时，测试员这样做有助于抢在客户之前发现这些错误。但是，如果他们多留意我已经提到的领域，我们大家可以活得更轻松。

英文出处：http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tr-out-loud/?p=665&tag=nl.e055

Developers: Are testers testing your patience?
Author: Sonja Thompson
Category: Contributors, TR Out Loud, guest post
Tags: Developer, Tester, Sonja Thompson

I got back to my desk after a short break and found several new e-mails in my inbox. One name instantly caught my eye. It was a colleague who had been assigned to test a script I had written. There were three e-mails from him, all within the space of about six minutes. The first e-mail just said “The script does not work.” The second one, which was time-stamped about two minutes later, read, “I had not made the script executable! But now it seems to produce garbage!” And the third exclaimed, “Ravi, it is all fine! I was looking in the wrong directory!”

《PurpleEndurer注：1、catch the eye of：引起...的注目/意
2、all very fine：不错(很好,固然可以...但是)
3、look in：顺便看望》

Though I was annoyed about the haste with which the tester had shot off these messages, I did take a moment to chuckle to myself about this series of e-mails. “Testers do try to do their bit to break the monotony of the day,” I thought to myself.

《PurpleEndurer注：1、be annoyed about the matter：因这事烦恼
2、chuckle to oneself：窃喜，独自暗中地笑》

However, jokes aside, if you’re a developer, I’m sure you’ve come across some testers who seem to define testing as “testing the developer.” Their dictionary seems to read:

Testing n. the art of testing the developer, or his patience

You send them a program, and they dutifully put it through the test — either by double-clicking on the executable or typing in the name of the executable on the command line and hitting Enter. And then comes the pat response, “Ravi, the program does not work!”

Sometimes there’s something more than just that terse statement — a brief line or two describing what happens when the program executes, or perhaps an even more elaborate explanation. There may even be a screenshot, which hopefully shows you what’s wrong or at least where to start looking. Rarely is there any mention of efforts made to analyze the problem or to eliminate some factors and isolate the cause of the problem.

《PurpleEndurer注：1、more than just：不仅仅是
2、mention of：提及》

Of course, the error could be a comma, a colon, or some other simple thing that you missed when you were tracking the football score rather than your code. In such cases, I’m sure you are suitably contrite, apologize, and try to make up in some way. However, just as often or probably more so, difficulty arises when the tester is watching something other than the program execution or the program’s results.

《PurpleEndurer注：1、in some way：在某种意义上,有一点,有些》

I’ve come across many instances where simple actions on the tester’s part could have helped him or her get past the reported obstacle, or at least explain the cause of the apparent failure of the program. This includes checking to see if the system had a reasonable amount of free disk space, reading the messages that you — the thoughtful developer that you are — made the program display when running into problems, or viewing the log files that are, after all, meant to be read by the user.

《PurpleEndurer注：1、come across：碰到(遇到,无意中发现)
2、get past：通过
3、mean to：对...重要；be meant to do：想要做什么》

The tester depends on the developer to think of all possible errors and trap them. He also expects that the developer will create enough of a trail to be able to track an error back to its cause. However, I believe it’s at least a part of the tester’s duty to attempt to identify the problem correctly and also the cause, if possible.

The tester should, at the very least, accurately report the problem that he or she comes across when testing. Often a program, or a set of programs, passes through several intermediate steps before concluding. If the program runs into an error, surely the tester can attempt to determine the steps that were completed before aborting. This not only gives the developer a clue about what could have gone wrong, but it also helps speed up the resolution of the error, as well as the conclusion of the development and testing cycle.

《PurpleEndurer注：1、pass through：穿过(透过,流过,通过)》

Apart from the occasional lack of cooperation from the tester, developers might come across situations where the tester appears to lack some basic skills. A developer colleague once told me about his experience with an inept tester. The project being tested ran on UNIX. It consisted of a bunch of programs and UNIX shell scripts that were put together inside a proprietary package, which ran the programs and scripts in sequence. When the tester ran into problems, he contacted my colleague for assistance, who in turn suggested that the best option was perhaps to step through the package and try to run each program or script manually, in sequence. He was flabbergasted when the tester responded, “How do I run the script manually?”

《PurpleEndurer注：1、proprietary packages > 自有/专属工具包
2、in turn：依次,轮流；反之，反过来
3、step through：逐步跟踪》

While some questions can be raised about the project manager’s choice of tester, it isn’t unreasonable to expect that the tester has a basic knowledge of the environment on which the program or project runs.

然而有些与项目经理对测试员的选择有关的问题可能会冒出来，期望测试员对程序或项目的运行环境有一个基本了解是没来由的。

It may not seem like it, but I do sympathize with testers. They have an unenviable job, having to run the same program again and again, looking for errors that may never show up. And testers do help discover those instances when the developer bungled before a client does. But if they would pay some heed to the areas I have mentioned, life could be a lot easier for us all.

《PurpleEndurer注：1、pay heed to：注意(留意)》