Can a Developer Become a Tester?

We all know that a software tester is a particular specialist whose task is to ensure that a program behaves as it should in different client scenarios on different devices and operating systems. A developer has completely different tasks and responsibilities.

Of course, any programmer can become a tester and achieve certain success there. He/she can even convince the company management that they don’t need a QA department at all.

Despite how eloquently the developer speaks about it, there are good reasons for hiring a separate specialist to test software functionality.

Development Isn’t Equal to the Testing

Learning the basics of software testing should be studied separately. Not all programmers can learn how to develop different types of tests, cover the test environment with user cases, and be able to intelligently automate the process.

Of course, theoretically, there is nothing difficult. But in a practice, there are subtleties because development and testing are completely different professions (although they are based on interaction with the software).

Soft skills are very important for any self-respecting tester. That’s because QA engineers must not just write high-quality reports but also structure semi-empirical results, to be able to describe in detail the preconditions and consequences of bugs!

Not everyone in the development department will be able or willing to create an exhaustive long-read report on the work previously done within their QA laboratory.

Love to Program Is Much Stronger Than to Test

More than half of programmers love to create software code, build an application architecture, perform code reviews, and make sure the code is clean. The process of software verification is quite different from this activity. Yes, code can be created there too but with a completely different approach.

Professional Deformation of Consciousness

The developer sees through the product he created by himself and uses it regarding his vision. A regular user will see this software in a completely different way. And this is a QA engineer who doesn’t involve in the product development and can look at the product from a potential user’s side. This is a tester, not a developer who can cover the product with all possible use cases.

Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Hire a QA Engineer

There are not many of them, but we can distinguish at least two:

1. No one knows the software better than the one who created it. After all, it is the programmer who knows all the strengths and weaknesses of the product.
2. The developer can create high-quality tests but only if he is sure that this work will be assessed, paid properly, and will not be strongly scolded for the number of missed bugs.

Short Conclusion

To sum up, we’d like to say that any project should have its testers. Their responsibilities will be check the product performance and work closely with the project manager and the development team. Because no matter how high-quality and clean the code is, the software must be user-friendly. And only a specialized QA engineer can ensure it!