Good points, but usually when we talk about testing in the realm of engineering, it's a means of verifying something is within the bounds it was designed for... not just to see what happens.
We don't run test suites on our software to see what it does. We run test suites to validate it operates as it is supposed to.
I think the way you described testing is more in line with tinkering and research rather than engineering. It's experimentation, not testing.
When the outcome is unknown and unreliably unpredictable, it's research (tinkering). When it's predictable and has a known, repeatable outcome, it's engineering.
>Good points, but usually when we talk about testing in the realm of engineering, it's a means of verifying something is within the bounds it was designed for... not just to see what happens.
Yeah that's fair.
I had originally skimmed the article, but after re-reading it the author apparently admits they didn't put any careful thought into what they made. No real goal. Just slapped stuff together so to speak. Which I'd agree doesn't quite sit as engineering to me...
We don't run test suites on our software to see what it does. We run test suites to validate it operates as it is supposed to.
I think the way you described testing is more in line with tinkering and research rather than engineering. It's experimentation, not testing.
When the outcome is unknown and unreliably unpredictable, it's research (tinkering). When it's predictable and has a known, repeatable outcome, it's engineering.