Re:Developers as testers == bad idea (Score 1)

Very very true. Working on a large project I know exactly how my code should work. Most of the time when I see a bug report the immediate reaction is 'Why would someone click there, I never would have done that since thats not the way its SUPPOSED to work'. Always have seperate testers in projects, they are invaluable. Heres what can go wrong (real example). Management gives a deadline for the project, ok no problem so far. Project is turned in on time, few hours later Management calls up frantically saying that there are bugs all over the place and that its not returning the right answers with the real data (as opposed to test data they sent). They say users are complaining.. ok so then we ask where are the bug reports to back this up? They respond 'We don't have time for bug reports this has to go live now!'. We respond 'uh what about the testing phase, you know, the one after we turn in the project and you test it first'. They respond 'You mean you didn't get the code right the first time?????'. Needless to say it took a while to explain why a testing phase is needed and that it is supposed to happen after the code is turned in because programmers do not randomly click on things they shouldn't (which users invariably do) especially when we never consider some of the things they might do (like clicking buttons before you select the appropriate item). Admitedly we try to think of those things but in my current project with many people working on different things it does happen a lot where we test our stuff and it works fine until we start putting things together. So yes, testers should not be coders and preferably they should be the actual people who are going to use it, it is just better that way.