Becoming a Quality Assurance and Software Testing Beginner.
âYou can learn new things at any time in your life if youâre willing to be a beginner. If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to youâ
~~ Barbara Shur
âThere are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth⌠not going all the way and not startingâ
~~ Buddha
Now Iâm not exactly a big fan of Buddha quotes but you have to admit that sometimes that nigga was spittin - respectfully of courseđś.
Starting a new phase in your life can be terrifying and exciting at the same time. The unending what-ifs, the question as to whether or not itâs the right thing to do, the possible imposters syndrome that makes you question whether that path isnât just for people with âspecial talentâ and youâre just wasting your time and money, why do we have to go through so much anxiety just because we want to achieve something? I hate it honestly.
However, something that has stuck with me for a while is this phrase, âYou miss 99% of the shots you donât take, so why donât you just reduce those odds by trying?đ¤ˇđžââď¸â. Over time, this helped me every time I was too scared or worried about a decision I was making, and basically, this led me to the beginning of my software testing journey.
For a lot of people that are not really in the tech community, or just know the normal basic everyday tech stuff, allow me to introduce you to the world of QA and software testing.
Think of a tester as an examiner or a reviewer basically, we can call them detectives or inspectors of software, where the criminals are the errors (called bugs) that they have to catch to make the software in an optimum state for the users. They are the people that test every feature of whatever the software might be, could be a website, a web app, a mobile app, basically anything. Currently, Iâve only been focused on being able to test web apps and websites but as a beginner obviously Iâm still growing.
I think itâs important to note that you donât need to be a programmer or to have insane programming skills to become a software tester. One of the really good software testers I follow on Twitter used to be a cleaner, another one that I know personally is still in university studying microbiology. So itâs actually something anyone can just pick up and start learning (and thereâs money in it oh, tech money đđ)
Funny enough before I knew it was an actual part of tech, I always asked my developer friends to send their apps or links of what theyâre building for me to test and assess (I should have charged them now that I think about itđ) and Iâd send a detailed document of what I thought the errors were and what would make it better. Until one day, one of my âregular customersâ asked if he should put a word in for me to his boss at his office to join the software testing team as an intern in the company. Of course, as per imposter syndrome, I said no immediately (stupidâŚI know), that I was under-qualified and I donât really know anything and bla bla bla yeah⌠basically I gave a lot of excuses and he dropped it. Then a month after that I saw this flyer for an offer to become a software testing ambassador of a company called Testify and they were about to run a paid course to teach people testing!! If Iâm being honest I was a bit skeptical about it, plus the money looked like a lot at the time, but again it was an opportunity I didnât want to pass by.
Fast forward, the course had 2 phases, manual testing phase, and automated testing phase. Personally, for me, I think most people that visit websites a lot; which is like half of the general population, would excel at manual testing . Why? Because it mostly involves mainly critical thinking and documenting the tests youâre running. For example âThe website should have a signup buttonâ is a test case. Now Iâm not saying software testing is a walk in the park (lolâŚdonât even think about it) but it really is something I think people should get into and explore. Donât let anyone, including yourself, discourage you.
Iâd appreciate any comments and questions you may have about this. You can also follow me on Twitter (Here) for more QA and software testing content.