I totally agree. What I think Test should mean includes testing the spec and acting as a user advocate; testing the design spec to ensure the dev is considering

I totally agree. What I think Test should mean includes testing the spec and acting as a user advocate; testing the design spec to ensure the dev is considering all relevant scenarios and cases; manual UI testing (and scenario-based API testing) to find the corner cases; writing test automation and scaffolding to catch regressions; and writing test automation using combinatorial techniques to cover as much of the input space with a minimal number of test cases. Now that I'm a dev I really wish I had some competent testers to work with. It's really impossible to test your own work, because you're inherently optimistic about your code. Testers need to have the mindset of "there's a bug in here somewhere, and I'm going to find it."