This morning, while browsing for a podcast for this 30 Days Of testing -challenge, I found myself thinking. Yes I know, it’s a harsh condition and I try to avoid it regularly, but one can’t help oneself. Not when you’re born this way, you know, with brains and all.

Anyhow, I started thinking, who was the test engineer in Starfleet Academy that tested Kobayashi Maru? Clearly, for it being a computer scenario, it should’ve been tested. How otherwise could’ve James T. Kirk beaten it, even by cheating? And furthermore, in the ship, there’s only operators available, mainly. Someone must have been done a hell of a coding in order to get the USS Enterprise to get around the orbit in the first place. And, as we all know, when there’s a developer there should be a tester available.

Which brings me to this: Is there testing involved in popular culture? In the ‘Saving Matt Damon’ – movie, The Martian (which by the way is a great book, not as good movie, Ridley Scott blew it), NASA does skip the tests, based on risk assessment, apparently,  in order to send the supplies to the Mars a bit more earlier, even the length of the tests is slightly discussed. That’s most likely due to that the author of the book is, if I recall correctly, a SW engineer.

But is there more QA/Test references in popular culture? If not, why not? We’re working on a field of SW (Well, HW needs to be tested, too, but that’s another story) and the field gets bigger and bigger all the time. It is clearly so, nowadays, that hackers and developers can actually tell people what their profession is and people in general have some sort of clue what they are doing for living.

Me, in the other hand, if I tell my profession to my relatives, am faced with a puzzled smile and slightly confused glare. Which I can buy, nobody seems to know what this testing is and what it is all about. Getting more testing stories in popular culture would actually help a bit.

It would be interesting to know, if I’m wrong here. What I know, is the narrow field of popular culture I’ve been following. I might be completely wrong, which is always all so human.

By the way, did you know that the Chernobyl disaster  was caused by running tests? Some experiments, as it seems. Sounds slightly like exploratory testing to me. It’s always a refreshing thought when someone bashes around the nuclear plant systems.

Just one more: Who was the guy, who tested the Death Star particle exhaust vents security? And who approved the solution?

Note: And the answer comes from the  deeps of Twitter:

Thanks, @Marcel_Gehlen

PS. I did find the podcast, too.