As a part of moving on to a new job and a shift in perspectives, Chris Hartjes has decided to write up a manifesto about testing, a big focus in his development life:

With the new position comes more of the stuff I am really passionate about: testing and automation. Which also got me to thinking about the reasons why I am so passionate about these things. I thought I would create my own little testing mini-manifesto here. The ideas my podcasting partner did with his MicroPHP Manifesto made me realize that sometimes it is good to write these things down, as it were.

His manifesto incudes a set of basic (yet fundamental) ideas about application testing:

• I test because the tools are easy to use
• I test because I don’t like surprises
• I test because I want people to understand what I’ve done
• I test because I want to be able to change things fearlessly
• I test because automation is a secret weapon
• I test because it forces me to focus on design
• I test because to me it is the right thing to do