hot topic in Yahoo Group "Context-Driven Software Testing"

zzgirl

Someone sent me this today and quite interested in what Asian ppl think about this. If anyone here have any comments or interests, you can log in the Yahoo Group "Context-Driven Software Testing" to see more comments there. To be sure you regiester first.

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I am sitting in a keynote address at the Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (Dublin). The keynote speaker is Professor Yulin Wang from Wuhan University. This is a prestigious professor from a prestigious university.

Professor Wang's slides are full of spelling mistakes. Some slides have obvious inconsistencies, such as "Hardwar" and "Hardware" -- a quick proofreading would have detected these obvious errors.

There are two obvious interpretations:

   1. Dr. Wang is such a sloppy person that he is unworthy of a job as software tester, or
   2. Our expectations with respect to spelling perfection from Asian candidates are inappropriate because of cultural differences that do not reflect on the underlying competence of the candidate.

Some members of this list would probably espouse #1, but I think this example is a reductio ad absurdem for that rule.

Does anyone from outside North America care to comment?
--
Cem Kaner, J.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology
150 West University Blvd., Melbourne, FL 32901
http://www.kaner.com