“Test-Infected” – the term coined by Erich Gamma in the paper “JUnit Test Infected: Programmers Love Writing Tests” basically describes a programmer who loves software testing. The term, in certain way, describes myself.
When you became test infected, nobody needs to tell you how important is to write tests or your manager/team lead doesn’t need to ask you for some unit tests. Tests is a natural discipline and that is impossible to avoid.
Controversial, the term “infected” sounds inappropriate for some very good and respectable programmers.
“I prefer the expression Test Happy. I get happy when I write and build a battery of tests. I don’t feel infected!” Joshua Kerievsky (Refactoring to Patterns book author)
“Instead, we’re pragmatic testers. Testing to us is simply another valuable tool that helps us as part of the software development cycle. We’re not particularly “test infected,” (…). We write tests when and where it makes sense; testing is a choice and not an infectious disease for us.” Cédric Beust (Next Generation Java Testing book author)
I respect all the opinions above (Cédric is one of my best influences) but I don’t take the term so serious, I’m just thinking on effects of the disease. It’s like the term “Java evangelist” (or whatever evangelist) – of course I don’t need to create a church and pray for Java, but it means that I have faith on that technology. When I say “infected” I’m not feeling sick, I’m just contaminated by the desire to build better software.
Even Cédric and Joshua don’t like the term, I’m pretty sure of diagnosis: They are very infected, test-infected virus, and ain’t no cure for that 
I don’t like the term “evangelist” either because pretty much all the technical evangelists that I have come across have always shown a bias so strong toward the subject that they are advocating that they lose their objectivity. It’s not just that they like what they are defending, they also attack, disparage and dismiss everything that competes with it.
I think “enthusiast” captures the intent better: you prefer one approach over the other but you still find value in what the rest of the field has to offer and you never leave it out as an option.
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Cedric
Comment by Cedric — January 13, 2009 @ 2:35 pm