Although it probably won't be as exciting as the life of Agent 007, even testers have a story. They are usually inconspicuous superheroes behind a keyboard, sending ones and zeros into the virtual world and constantly searching for its limits. What do you think, could be the life path of a tester interesting? Honza started with an interest in creating websites. How a web developer becomes a tester is explained in this article.

I "developed" my first website in Notepad when I was in elementary school. None of you will probably remember them, since its address was C:\my_web. I learned HTML and CSS with some basics of JavaScript by examining the code of fanzines published on Score magazine supplement CDs. You could say that I became a web designer and front-end developer.

Later I started exploring the possibilities of PHP and MySQL and created websites for my band and the music studio where we recorded the album. Based on this experience, I joined a small web design studio so these websites were my "entrance" to the professionals. Even though I was a graphic designer and coder, I helped with the development of a larger project that was being finished. And in the end, I stuck with it. That's how I became a full-stack web developer.

The web design studio transferred into an online marketing agency over time. I gained experience with development, databases, and other technologies used in the business. We helped clients with marketing, created our own tools, connected various systems, and worked on automated campaigns or processed data. Technical solutions were often up to me, so I also took on the role of analyst and technical support. Since I like challenges, we often ventured into uncharted waters. Sometimes it was necessary to connect an e-shop to a prehistoric system or to hack SAP, for example. And since we were a really small agency, the role of marketer and content creator was kind of a matter of course.

I discovered that some roles did not suit me at all over time. The expansion of my knowledge was more vertical than horizontal. I have always enjoyed analyzing and solving problems and proposing solutions. On the other hand, I didn't enjoy programming the same forms over and over again or explaining that "turning it off and on again" really helps.

As a developer I never felt complete, as an analyst I missed the "technical part" and I have no talent for communicating with clients. After researching job ads, I decided that a tester position might be right for me. I thought the testers just clicks buttons and doesn't really had to know much = easy money. I'm glad my idea was totally off.

I got the first tester position thanks to the entry test. The task was to test a certain part of a web application that calculated routes between individual points. I realized that tens of thousands of combinations would need to be tested. So I wrote an automated test to check them all.

Why do I enjoy testing? My range of activities is more narrow now. I can do what I really enjoy and what I do best. Mostly I communicate with developers, so I can throw out quotes like "I discovered an API bottleneck" and everyone knows what I'm talking about. I discover defects or weak points and participate in the design of their solutions and the solution itself is beyond me (it sometimes happened that I proposed a solution depending on my ability to implement it). I am working on much more interesting projects (than e-shops or similar "boring" web applications) due to my specialization.