Driver Wanted

As I was walking down the street the other day I noticed a sign in the window of a restaurant:

Driver Wanted

Valid WSDL required

I blinked, and then blinked again. WSDL required? The restaurant needing a delivery driver made sense, but why would the driver need WSDL? Does it matter what sort of API that WSDL defines, or will any old WSDL do? Is the owner one of those executives who gets everything they know from airline magazines, and who has been seeing this WSDL thing show up in so many articles that he figures it's time for him to get one? Are they going to embed a wireless-enabled chip in the driver so they can download new instructions and driving directions directly into the driver's brain? How do they check quality of service? Have the driver go all over town and ask "Can you ping me now? Good. Can you ping me now? Good."

Eventually, of course, I realized that WSDL stood for Washington State Driver's License, and suddenly everything made sense. The person who made the sign likely never even considered that it could be interpreted differently than they intended it.

If the sign was intended to be immediately understood by all comers then it had a bug. The person who made the sign didn't catch the bug because they didn't move out of their frame of reference. Or perhaps they did, but decided the bug wasn't a stop-ship problem. Either way, I ran into it. There was nothing in my path to stumble over as I did a double-take looking at the sign, so I wasn't hurt. But of course bugs are not always so benign.

Everybody knows software has bugs, but everything else in life has bugs as well. Don't limit your testing to your application, but rather test everything you come into contact with. But do be careful not to go too far - most people don't like it when you test their artwork!

Posted by The Braidy Tester at 07:30 AM  Permalink