Five Questions With J. B. Rainsberger

J. B. Rainsberger is likely no stranger if you are a unit-testing Java developer. J.B. wrote the ever popular JUnit Recipes: Practical Methods for Programmer Testing, which has more-or-less become the Bible of Java development. He is a frequent contributor on the JUnit mailing lists and conferences around the world, and he founded XPDay North America conference. These are some of the reasons he was awarded the Agile Alliance's 2005 Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile Practice. Here is what Joe has to say:

DDJ: What was your first introduction to testing? What did that leave you thinking about the act and/or concept of testing?
JBR: I wrote test plans for a project in my Software Engineering graduate class in 1998. This mostly consisted of writing out manual test scripts in English, which seems quaint now. My impression was that rote testing needs to be automated.

DDJ: What has most surprised you as you have learned about testing/in your experiences with testing?
JBR: Testers in large organizations spend enormous amounts of time executing pointless tests manually. What a waste.

DDJ: What is the most interesting bug you have seen?
JBR: While at IBM, I saw a bug that took 3 weeks to fix. The application in question was consuming native graphics resources in Windows until Windows was no longer capable of painting a window. Fortunately, I wasn't the one chasing it; but I felt pretty bad for the one who did.

DDJ: How would you describe your testing philosophy?
JBR: Automate all the rote tests, but keep an experienced exploratory tester involved in the project. Test-drive every line of code you reasonably can.

DDJ: What do you think is the most important thing for a tester to know? To do? For developers to know and do about testing?
JBR: Testers are not there to wipe the programmer's arse. The programmer should not deliver to testers stupid defects they could reasonably find and fix.

DDJ: Is there something which is typically emphasized as important regarding testing that you think can be ignored, is unimportant?
JBR: Writing test plans. Instead, execute a test, then consider automating it.

DDJ: What do you see as the biggest challenge for testers/the test discipline for the next five years?
JBR: As more programmers test-drive code, testers will need to develop real testing skill, and not just execute on someone else's test plan.

DDJ: Going meta (to channel Jerry Weinberg), what else should I ask you? What would you answer?
JBR: Ask me, "Why do you test-drive your code?"

My answer, "Because I like the resulting designs. Validation is a nice side-effect."

[See my Table Of Contents post for more details about this interview series.]

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