Testing

One of the drawbacks of building your own software (on a budget) is that you also have to test it. If you’re lucky enough never to have been involved in software development, bug testing is the most tedious process you can imagine.

“Something went wrong!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do it again so I can see.”

“But I don’t know what I did. And it’s working again now.”

“Retrace your steps and keep doing the same thing until it glitches again.”

And so you do.

Again.

And again.

And agaaaaagh.

It’s a desk-bound demonstration of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. There are professional software testers who do this for a living, 9-to-5, all the working week. I can only imagine that they must be lunatics to begin with.

So I came back to the house after a long, maddening and mostly fruitless day of bug hunting and immediately realised that my mum is carrying out a series of tests of her own. On me.

She’s been nudging away at this ever since I got here – the same question, replicating the steps, then trying again:

“Are you going to see your father...?”

“You should tell your father that...”

“I wish you’d see your father....”

“He’s only just down the road, you know...”

“Visiting hours were extended last month...”

“There’s no harm in you popping in to say hello...”

And every time, I’m returning the same result: no thanks. I don’t need the stress. I’m not ready for any of this yet. Sorry. I want to explain, and maybe if I keep typing then I’ll find the right words to say how we got where we are.

But we all have our bugs. And maybe that’s why my mum keeps asking and keeps asking, insanely hopeful that one day I’ll finally glitch.