Introduction
One of the great opportunities I had when contributing to “The Testing Planet”, was answering people’s letters, or in this case ‘Questions’. We created a “Dear Evil Tester” column, an obvious rip-off of the Agony Aunt columns that have existed in newspapers for a bazillion years.
I haven’t added these to the book in chronological order, I’ve added them in the order that I think either motivates the reader most, or for comic effect, or I just pasted them in randomly. Whichever explanation works for you is undoubtedly the correct one. If it looks like genius, then I meant it.
In fact the very first one, I made up. Apparently this is common practice in the newspaper industry, but I did it to kickstart the process. You might even be able to tell which letter it is. I know which one it is, but I’m not telling. All the other letters were ‘real’.
I had no idea if the people on the receiving end of my advice were serious in their questioning, or if they were contributing to the global joke that was “Dear Evil Tester”. Frankly, I didn’t care. I always planned to take their question seriously and produced a serious answer injected with all the humour, scorn, and cynicism I could muster. Additionally, lacing the answer with the ‘I wish someone had told me this when I was younger’ attitude that I wanted out there in the testing community.
A Book of Three Halves
This is a book of two halves, and an extra bit. The first section contains the ‘published’ letters and answers. This is a nice, fun, gentle introduction to the world of the Evil Tester.
The second half is darker, harder, at times intensely practical, but still edgy advice. The kind of advice you don’t receive anywhere else, possibly for good reason.
And then we finish with some essays which summarise the attitudes and approaches evidenced in the letter answers.
So prepare yourself. If you are just here for a good time, then forget it, you’re going to learn stuff as well and be pushed to think about what you do.
On Publishing
I was somewhat reticent in publishing this. After all “Evil Tester” is a persona, not me, and while sometimes I channel him to make a point, or to rail at the world, he doesn’t represent my normal communication approach.
Frankly I was worried that some people would never speak to me again. I’ve forgotten who most of the people submitting questions were, if I ever knew, but I’m sure I recognise some of them. And some of them I hope will speak to me again.
Also, I’m not sure how the world of work will react to this, some people might never employ me after reading this. But then, some people will never employ me anyway.
And I’m sure you, dear reader, don’t care about my employment prospects. After all, when one writes a book one instantly becomes rich and famous.
Also, you may not have even paid for this book, you might have ripped it off some torrent or something (if you did and they embedded a virus in the middle then don’t blame me). If you did pay for it, then thank you. I do hope it entertains you, perhaps you’d consider employing me as a consultant as well?
And I know some of you don’t care about my employment prospects given the advice I received from some of you:
- “You should swear more”
- I’m pretty sure I don’t swear at all in here. After all, we are gentlefolk. And if it’s in the dictionary, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count as swearing. And worry not for I don’t even use those words, so all the little children here, you can read this text without any fear.
- “You should write more strongly”
- While touchtyping does make my fingers stronger, I’m not prepared to bench press solely using them. I think that is why God invented arms. That, and to make it easier to peel bananas.
- “You should name and shame”
- I put my name on the cover. Oh, the shame I feel.
- “Make a stand. Take a single position.”
- The only principle I’m prepared to absolutely commit to, with absolute certainty, is that I can change my mind.
- “Add more facts”
- If I add a fact in here, people might think it is made up. Then where would they be. They’d start believing made up facts and figures thinking they were real because they read it in black and white in a book and books deal with facts don’t they. If you don’t believe me read Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus books, then try and work out what is fact and what is fiction.
And frankly some of you are my competitors. We work in the same industry. We do similar things. And if I become unemployable then that works in your favour. I’m not going to be cynical and attribute this motivation to everyone that encouraged me. Of course I can think of someone who did, and might have, but… I’m sure they didn’t, well, I’m mostly sure.
On Formatting
Some of you may notice that your name, no longer has its special characters in it. Yup, that was me. I took them out. Sorry. I didn’t fancy maintaining anything except ZX81 alpha chars. Feel free to write to someone else and complain.
When I started writing this book I originally formatted the ‘letters’ as:
Dear Evil Tester,
blah blah blah
from,
Someone
But, honestly, that seemed like padding. So I’ve done the decent thing and removed most of the formatting so now they look like this:
Then my answer in here.
It may not read like a letter, but at least you can take the consolation to heart that I don’t want to rip you off with an inflated page count.
Nope, no padding in here. Every word I write has value. I don’t just put text in here to up the word count and increase the number of pages so that you believe you have a bigger bundle of pages than you actually do. I would not do that to you. Take me at my word that I consider your decision to purchase this book as incredibly important to me and I would do nothing that might damage that trust between us, so you will not find any artificial padding in here.
Nope, none.
Nada, never ever.
That’s right, not… ever.
Enjoy.
