I turned 50 last year.  No big deal, no big party, I didn’t want one.  After all I don’t feel I am getting old or even middle aged, in many respects I still feel the same way I did when I was in my 20s.  There are signs, however, of getting a bit older.  I was reminded of these signs over the holiday weekend just gone in the UK when I was out shopping with my wife:

·        I look at some of the young people and think “how can they wear those clothes?”

·        I hear some of the popular music and think “but it all sounds like noise to me”

·        I reminisce with my wife and friends and we talk about things that we did when we were “young” and realise that we saw things that happened well before current teenagers were born

·        I used to think I knew it all, as I get older the more I learn the more I realise there is to learn

·        Conversations often end with the phrase “which was a lot of money in those days”

Maybe I am turning into my Dad, they say we do eventually.

I was thinking more about this today as I drove to work listening to a Jimi Hendrix CD and realised he has been dead for 36 years.  My first major row with my parents was over him, they wouldn’t let me go to see him in concert because he took banned substances and they said I was too young to go to Woodstock (they were probably right, but what a gig that was and how envious I was of the people I knew who did go!).

What has all this rubbish got to do with Software Testing, you may well ask!  I was thinking, whilst listening to “Voodoo Chile”, about my early days in Software Testing and there are signs of getting older:

·        I see a question on a forum from a newbie and think “how can anyone not know that?”

·        I hear someone talk about how they found a bug and think “but that is how we have always found that type of bug”

·        I reminisce with colleagues and we talk about how software development used to be and realise that some of the computers we used were built well before some of the current new testers were born

·        I went into Software testing thinking I knew it all, as I get older the more I learn the more I realise there is to learn

One of the signs of getting older is less tolerance for the less experienced, the less knowledgeable, the “young”.  It is something I see on forums that the experienced people can be terse with the inexperienced.  Maybe we “oldies” should just step back and think “That was me 25 years ago, I needed help with the basics and I didn’t know it”.  I try to be patient with inexperienced people and know that I don’t always succeed, but that is my problem, not theirs.

I know I have got fed up with answering standard questions on forums and haven’t done it for some time, maybe I should start again, with more patience, after all, they will be paying for my pension in a few years time!

And, lastly, I remember my first Test department annual budget which was £150k, which was a lot of money in those days.