Book Review: Stranger to the Ground, by Richard Bach.

This book is a must have for any aviation geek, it tells the story of a Pilot, who does a flight in a F-84F Thunderstreak from South England to Central France, in a stormy night somewhere in the '60s.

The story is written with such detail, that you get to know all the sounds, noises, procedures and details a Pilot goes through when flying a simple mission.

Before he climbs to the plane, he get's a report of the status of the plane, with known issues, just as a automated test suite tells you that all CI tests are green, the Developers have reviewed the code and that the issue is ready to deploy.

Then he starts the engine of the plane (designed to start with a explosion!) and tells the Ground Crew to detach the airplane from the APU that brought it to life, just as a Tester deploys a the new feature into a testing environment, in order to perform the testing.

He flights following his flight plan, from Southern England, to Central France, but with a planned deviation from the straight line in order to avoid the Massif Central and the mountains that stand proud over 6000 feet hight, just as a tester knows what the feature to test is about, and what kind of actions he is going to perform in order to learn from the resulting observations and decide if something is not as expected.

In the middle of the night, he sees signs of a thunderstorm, evaluates the known risks, and decide what to do next, asking for weather reports to those airports that are in range of his radio so he can evaluate the situation and take decisions, Just as a Tester can ask to Developers or Product Managers, or whoever might provide useful information, for a deeper understanding of what he is observing, so the ones that have to take decisions have the best available information.

While he is flying, he recalls the days he was in the flight academy, and he thinks in how easy it is to fly a jet fighter... even his wife could fly the plane, and drop an atomic bomb, as soon as she learns how to do it. Does it sound familiar to the anyone can test we use to talk about?

At some point, he flies straight into a thunderstorm... and you know what? I am not able to come with a single example of a Tester running into such a situation. This is why I admire Pilots, because they know how to fly, and because of this flying they might get into situations that I will never have to face as a Software Tester.

The closest I have been to the experiences described in this book must have been when I was in my twenties and my only vehicle was my motorcycle. I have driven 700km in a single dark night, with the only guidance of a front-light, and the company of the green backlit from the speed & rev gauges. I have gone through snow storms in Spain, heavy rain in the north of France, I have seen a truck tire exploding just 10 meters in front of me, and I got lucky a few more times. But I never went into a thunderstorm flying a small jet fighter.

At the end of his story, he lands his plane following the procedure for a blind landing, and delivers the canvas bag he was carrying because this was his mission, just as a Tester writes the report of what he has tested, how does he know the results were the expected ones, and how did the testing go, if he found any issues that slowed down his testing that could be interesting to share.

Did I say this book was for plane geeks? Well, maybe it could be a book for Software Testers after all.
Give it a try, and tell me what you think.