Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

It seems that there are many questions about the cognition, prospect and development of the software testing industry. However, this time we do not talk about compensation (friends who follow can go to the "professional friends set" to see statistics), do not talk about recruitment (go to "Zhaopin" can inspect the number of recruitment needs on the spot at any time), after all, relevant articles abound. Let's look at this from a different perspective.

Let's first talk about the difference between "industry" and "technology".

Industry and technology generally belong to the "inclusive" relationship, that is, what technologies are used in an industry. First of all, we think that IT is a large industry category. When we meet, people often ask, "Dude, what do you do?"Oh, me, IT." You see, when people say IT, it basically means working in this industry.

So what are the "development", "testing" and "operation and maintenance" that we often talk about?

You can think of these as parallel departments in the IT industry (or company), such as "development department", "testing department" and so on. Of course, some people call it "development industry" and "testing industry". Such a name is equivalent to a secondary division under the IT industry, which can be regarded as a "sub-industry".

The following is the technology involved in the industry. For example, security testing (technology), performance testing (technology), automated testing (technology) will be used in testing, while developers can use Python language (technology), Java language (technology) and so on.

Let's talk about the characteristics of technology.

The development of anything can not escape the whole process from birth to death. We call it "life cycle" in the jargon. This is true of an "industry", and the same is true of a "technology within an industry".

Let's take a look at the change of technology. As far as development technology (languages) is concerned, some languages have left us, some languages are slowly disappearing, and some languages are growing rapidly (how many languages are gone in the picture below). There is no ivy here, each taking the lead for several years. How many "old people" in Python are transferred from Java / C++? Therefore, language is a tiring task, especially doomed to the constant change of this technology. Everyone can "watch the pre-court flowers blossom and fall". It is really "what it feels like, and only you know it".

How do we identify the development trend of the industry?

To judge the trend of an industry, see whether it is divergent or convergent. In addition, when we look at the problem, we can't analyze it separately. We should consider it in a big environment, in a real environment.

As mentioned earlier, the "testing industry" belongs to the "IT industry", so what is the current situation of the IT industry?

The IT industry is not playing by itself, it is actually a booster, and has even led changes in many other industries, affecting the way it works. From medical care to government affairs, from logistics to finance, from shopping to office, we traverse all industries horizontally. Can we tell which industries do not need computers and software? Then to the current artificial functions, big data and other emerging fields, IT's tentacles are almost everywhere, expanding rapidly.

Based on this, the "testing industry" as an indispensable part of IT company, its development is self-evident. After all, an untested driverless car, no matter how much publicity, I believe we dare not buy it.

From macro to micro observation

Below the industry is technology. Let's take this piece and have a chat. Technology has updates and iterations, so are the trends of these updates divergent or convergent?

From the working way of testing, with the progress of technology, more testing methods have been introduced. From the initial manual testing to the use of a variety of tools and means for automated testing, and now many companies have begun to introduce artificial intelligence technology into the testing field to make testing more fully and comprehensively.

From the point of view of the object of the test, the scope of the test is gradually expanding. From the initial software testing on PC, to the testing of mobile devices (mobile phones, PAD, etc.), to the development of testing for a variety of smart devices (smart wear, smart home, smart driving, etc.), this momentum is not fierce.

From the perspective of the areas involved in the test, the tentacles extended to various industries are almost everywhere. It is no exaggeration to say that where there is software, it needs to be tested, and where there is code, it needs to be tested. Software code is no longer an independent individual, it is deeply integrated with hardware, equipment, home appliances, cars and machinery, which leads to the continuous expansion of the extension of testing.

In short, the demise of a technology is not the end of the industry. The key is to see if more technologies have emerged and expanded to a wider range of areas. It is also mentioned here that generally when we talk about development, it is often aimed at learning a language, such as learning Java technology and learning Python technology. It is rare to see someone learn all kinds of languages. After all, there are differences in the field of application. For example, when we engage in Web development, I believe that most companies choose Java. Although Python also has various frameworks to develop Web systems, its advantages are limited after all. For testing, although there are many technical options, the requirements for testers are often multi-options, both interface testing and automated testing, as well as mobile testing. So testers aim at testing this "industry", not just a "technology", so that the career path will be relatively long and broad.

The status and importance of testing is self-evident, such as: construction supervision, drug supervision, insurance supervision, anti-corruption justice, quality inspection and other departments, although they do different things, they have the same purpose. Software testing is an important means to ensure software quality, as long as the software is developing, software testing will always move forward.

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