This is what concerns me about the "testing vs. checking" meme in software quality assurance circles today.
"Testing vs. Checking"
"Testing vs. Checking"
You will find this meme under discussion at all of the leading software quality assurance (SQA) conferences today including GTAC, STPCon, STAR, CAST and the various Selenium confs.
In short the discussion revolves around whether a Cartesian divide can be effected between the human and the computer's role in software quality assurance.
"Testing vs. Checking"
It is not the discussion itself that bothers me. Although Cartesian division is out-of-fashion with Devops Luminaries(tm) such as myself, I can certainly see the utility of a Cartesian point of view when establishing certain foundational local taxa --- as we Test Architects often must do!!!
Concern trolling
What jerks my fucking chain though is the god damned concern trolling.
The biggest problem by far is all the fucking language policing that goes on in the testing and in the agile community. Language policing is microagressions. Stop it and apologize.
The most common form of Language Policing (aka Tone Policing) that I've seen take place around "testing vs. checking" is "correcting" people who choose to identify as automators of test activities.
I've personally been interrupted while speaking at a conference at least three times only to have the interruptor explain that "checking isn't testing." Yeah motherfucker. I already knew that and I don't give a shit about it becasue from my perspective that's minutia that everyone takes as written in the first place.
Interrupting other professionals' to corret trivial language choices is uncool at best. Viewed in a dispassionate light, such behavior is elitist, immature and alienating. Most people won't put up with that, either because it makes them feel bad or because it makes them feel like they've wasted their time. Yet the behavior persists for some reason.
