Nature vs. Nurture

What does it really mean, Nature or nurture. Simple question; simple answer. You where either born with it or you learned it along the path of life. So did we learn to become testers or where we just born to be a tester?

If you look at our childhood and even further back as a baby, we all tested at some point. Putting anything in reach in our mouth, trying out that delicious looking and tasting thumb and (a bit later on) testing how far we could go with our parents. Kind of boundry value analyses in real life. Even then we knew different testing techniques in order to test life and the world around us. Monkey testing might have been the biggest technique we used as a kid, but even an exploritory test was applied. Smoke testing is applied as well for a quick intake of a new situation we encounter. Trying to asses if this situation is workable for us or if we just should send it back (e.g. by walking away).

Even though we never applied the technique as it should be (writing things down for example), we did execute them.

A test like performance testing (which is not a technique by the way) was something we obviously do all our life. Some of us more than others (if you look at sports), but if the requirement is that we should be able to walk to the next bar or do some shopping; that is a kind of performance test. And I will not even go into Acceptance testing. we can all imagine how this is applied I guess.

So, where does nurture kick in? If you really look at it, aren't we all testers by nature? Does nurture kick in when we need to write down what we always have been doing? To apply a technique to a situation unknown to us and not even related to "real life"? This might be the case, but it might also be the fact that we now have to explain what we know by nature.

So nurture your nature and become what you have been doing all your life; a Tester!