Talk:Software testing
From Academic Kids
- How about (external) links to Ward Cunningham's wiki? His wiki has a lot of software development stuff: patterns, methodology, etc.
- I added a bit about test driven code; which indirectly refers to the brunt of the discussion on Ward's wiki.JimD 04:48, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)
I also added a link to Ivars Peterson and a reference to his book. I feel a little awkward doing so as I'm not trying to endorse it in particular; it just happens to be the resource that I thought appropriate to that juncture.
I'm also too tired to go back through and clean up my edits more and do additional research at the moment; but I feel like the work I did was better submitted, even in rough form, then discarded. So we'll see what the rest of the wikipedian community as a whole makes of it. :) Edit Boldly (In particular I know the Latin is awkward. It sticks out like a sore thumb. Fix it. Please)JimD 04:48, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)
Removed paragraph on being able to prove things in a court of law. Almost all software companies disclaim liability for buggy software, and except for a few life-critical pieces of software, the prospect of being sued isn't a strong motivating factor. Also, except for life-critical software, most software testing does not seek to eliminate all defects since this is generally too expensive to be worth the cost.
- However I did engage in an assignment once, the objective of which was to test whether the software might leave the supplier exposed to an anti-trust law suit. The software processed data feeds containing financial data and the licence required that this data was capable of being processed by competitors' systems. Without using any of these systems we had to verify that the software and documenation didn't breach this licence. Matt Stan 01:04, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Software testing, like software engineering and methodologies, is largely defined by common practices and fashions.
Despite companies disclaiming liability for buggy software, many of those claims have not been upheld in court. Cem Kaner has suggest this a few time. --Walter Görlitz 20:49, 12 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Gamma Testing discussion is off-beat. This might be a better description: http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/dictionary/detail.asp?guid=&searchtype=1&DicID=10215&RefType=Dictionary
"Some cynics say..." -- Really, does someone have a reference for this? If not, i suggest deleting entire discussion of gamma testing.
Controversy Section, etc.
It's about time we recognized that prominent people in the industry have very different views of testing. I confess, I was tempted to throw this entire software testing article out and rewrite it without the gratuitous references to weak testing folklore such as black box and white box testing-- an idea that has almost no content, conveys no skill or insight, and merely takes up valuable room that could be used to discuss the bona fide skills and techniques of software testing. (If that sounds arrogant to you then my point is proven: there is a lot of disagreement...)
But, in the spirit of wikidom, rather than tear the article up, I added the section on controversy, and I just added the second paragraph which introduces the notion of investigation and questioning as central to testing.
I intend to come back periodically and morph this entry into something I think is useful, unless there's a lot of push back, in which case we should incorporate the controversy into the article, I believe. Or establish new articles where the various schools of thought can play alone.
-- JamesBach
