The Day I Became a Bug Hunter

This article recounts the author's first experience as a bug hunter during a software testing competition. Despite having no prior professional experience in software testing, the author was randomly selected to participate. The challenge required finding and documenting as many bugs as possible within six hours.

The author approached the task with a beginner's mindset, unsure of how to test software properly. They watched tutorials on software testing and made a checklist of things to test, focusing primarily on responsiveness, navigation, forms, buttons, links, and validation. The goal was to find just one useful bug.

As the competition began, the six hours felt far longer than expected. The author explored various aspects of the website, resizing screens, filling out forms incorrectly, clicking buttons, and testing the website's behavior in ways the developers probably hadn't anticipated. Despite the pressure, the author found their first bug while examining the website's footer.

The links in the footer did not provide any visual indication that they were clickable, which was an issue that even someone experienced in QA would have noticed.

This initial discovery boosted the author's confidence and shifted their mindset from "I don't know how to test software" to "Okay, what else can I break?" The author's enthusiasm for finding bugs grew as they continued to explore the website, questioning its behavior and looking for any issues that could affect users. While they didn't discover any major security vulnerabilities, the author reported numerous usability and functional issues, including problems with form submissions, navigation, and state management.