Shocking Developer Quotes

Just yesterday a developer was in my office to watch me reproduce a defect in order to get more information. I apologized for the time it was taking to get the machine on (I had shut down the one he needed to see because I was on to another system). While waiting we made small talk, and then he said something that made me look right at him in shock.

“It is nice to work for an organization that has QA.”

He proceeded to tell me about the previous organization he worked for and how the developers tested their own code and the customers were not so happy with the products because of the end results. It appeared to me that he had been frustrated by this.

While, more often than not, we hear of developers saying things like, “it doesn’t do that on my machine,” or “no user would do that,” I thought it would be nice to share this statement with you all. Have you got any shocking quotes from developers that you would care to share?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James Christie on 21 August 2008 at 10:52am: "I did what the spec said. Yes, I knew it it was wrong, but it would have slowed me down and created extra work for me if I'd reported that. It's not my job to get the spec right. That's the users' job. Why should I have to do extra work because of someone else's mistake? It was their fault. I just followed the spec. It's not my fault. It's not fair you're picking on me."

Moan continues, till I end discussion by saying something I really shouldn't have.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Michele Smith on 21 August 2008 at 10:30pm: In a way.... that is funny! Sad, but funny.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Matthew Heusser on 21 August 2008 at 2:39pm: "It works on my machine"

"No user would ever do that"

"That's not a bug, it's a feature"

"It's supposed to do that."

"The software is performing as coded."

"99.9% done, but it's not ready for QA yet"

"You darn QA guys are slowing us down!"

Are a few classics.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Michele Smith on 21 August 2008 at 10:35pm: I have heard a few of these before as well. Almost makes it seem there is a special class on it that developers secretly take.
Overall, though, I have been lucky to have developers who - for the most part - are playing for the same team with QA and not against QA.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ido Schacham on 22 August 2008 at 8:26am: LOL. I wrote a post about common developer excuses a while ago, turns out there are plenty of them.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Sharath Byregowda on 22 August 2008 at 11:38am: Michele,

In many teams I have worked with, there have been times when development seek information from test team to fix a bug, investigate a bug, implement functionality, performance tuning etc.

And there have been instances when I have listened to the classic dialogues.

I feel when developers understand that a tester is able to provide the information that matter to stake holder, which in turn could be beneficial for the team, they might start respecting you. I also feel achieving creditability within the project team is very important for a tester.

-Sharath.B
http://testtotester.blogspot.com; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Michele Smith on 24 August 2008 at 10:15am: Very well put.

More often than not, this is the way we work together where I am employed. I feel that mutual respect and remembering to separate the problem from the person make this possible.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Peter McIntosh on 24 August 2008 at 8:31am: My favourite is:

"... design spec? Nah - we don't write that until we've done the code. How could we write it before?"

Another one that came to mind when writing this was:

"...the documentation is in the code..."; ▶ Reply to This