Hi there. Dawn here. Remember me? That crazy lady who changed her LEGAL NAME to Dawn Test Code? Who took flak about tying her name to her profession, and what if she changed professions?!?!?
I spent most of my career as a champion for software testing and software testers. I have a BS in CS and knew from early on that I didn't want to sling code all day. I did test this theory (see what I did there?), and did a short gig in a job that was a developer role. I much preferred testing, with a more diverse set of tasks and the ability to break shit all the time.
I became a consultant with a bang, speaking at national conferences and becoming friendly with many great leaders in the agile software and agile testing spaces. I wrote prolifically, and I worked with many teams, helping them integrate better, focusing hard on testers and developers working together and pairing as much as possible. I often felt like I was dragging a bag of boulders up a mountain, but, you know, change is hard like that.
The Agile Manifesto was signed in 2001. That was 17 years ago. XP existed before then, and on XP teams, different roles worked together as just a normal part of everyday life. By early 2017, I saw my world view shifting. Machine learning was approaching the masses, and I had my sights set on applying machine learning to elements of the software delivery process. I found myself increasingly shocked that ANYONE was still asking themselves whether the testers should sit with the developers, or whether they should use TDD or CI.
And then, I got clear on my values.
TESTING IS DEAD. IT IS NOT A SEPARATE ACTIVITY FROM DEVELOPMENT. IT **IS** DEVELOPMENT.
I decided that I was no longer going to drag people through change they didn't want to go through. I decided that anyone who was still asking themselves the questions above just weren't for me any more. I knew that there was a ton of fun to be had in the emerging tech worlds of machine learning and blockchain, and I had been speaking blockchain for several years at that point. And I gathered up some money (thank you bitcoin) and some of the best people I had worked with over the years and together, we started UNspecified.
At UNspecified, we believe that high quality software requires a full delivery pipeline. This includes frequent commits, automatic build triggers, automated testing at multiple levels, push-button deploys, with feedback into the delivery process along the way. We believe in infrastructure-as-code and containers-as-build-steps. We believe in automation to accomplish tasks that should not be done manually, with almost constant, two-way information flow about the delivery process. For us, there is no other way to develop and deliver any software.
by Dawn Code