So, You Know How To Test, Why Not Learn To Code?

4 min readJan 27, 2022

(Originally posted on testhuddle in 2015)

“Learning to code gives you a completely new perspective when you look at a computer. Before, you think of it as an appliance — like a fridge — accepting what it can do. After, you know that you can code that computer to do anything you can imagine it doing. That’s a massive change … and a massive challenge!” – Sir Tim Berners Lee , Inventor, World Wide Web

The idea that we must all learn to code has gained currency in the recent years. There is even a movement to encourage people from all walks of life (beyond the geeksphere) to learn to code. It can be for kids to get a head start or for adults to change career paths or simply to discover the inner geek — leading to a number of edtech startups targeting this opportunity. Some people have gone even further by saying that learning to code is a life skill for people to survive in the brave new digital world — similar to language skills or swimming etc.

Unsuprisingly, there are a few people who are sceptical and believe that coding is a specialised skill and not for everyone. So, is ‘learn to code’ another passing fad or — is there a convincing argument?

Why don’t you be the judge of that!

Personally, I find my development background extremely useful in areas such as test automation , DevOps and development quality.

Consider Test automation , the most obvious extension of a coding hobby that testers can apply in day to day jobs.
The wider DevOps and engineering practices is an exciting area where one can explore and try out new tools and services ranging from environment virtualisation on the cloud to continuous integration.
Or in the area of Development quality , one can have far more meaningful conversations with developers on topics such as code coverage, unit testing, security assurance etc.

I don’t consider myself a core developer anymore — the last time I coded for an enterprise client was probably back in 2000's. However,I do try to keep in touch with the latest and greatest development practices, ‘infra as code’ approaches along with the modern QA trends.

The section about multi-skilled ninjas and more

With the increasing adoption of agile methods by enterprises, the dev and test worlds are merging and better appreciation of the coding world will ony increase the affinity between devleoper and testers. In fact, few purist agile practioners proclaim — you just have ‘team members’ in agile teams, not developers, not testers. (multi-skilled ninjas :) )

Whether you subscribe to such a school of thought or not , increased collaboration with development is the order of the day. We all know that collaboration with development teams to encourage up stream quality is a critical aspect of shift-left philosophy. Imagine how effective you can be when you speak the dev. language?