One of our guest lectures considers tester's everyday life. It will be held in form of lightning talks: first a short talk on a topic and then questions/conversations for a while. We get to choose topics from a prepared list. Go and vote for 4 most interesting ones. The ones you would like to hear more about. Vote now!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDNEMWVWMXlkeHAtYTc3R1ZpTjFMTmc6MQ#gid=0
In addition we can have a bonus topic. So if you have anything you would like to hear about, anything related to testing, add a comment to this post. We will then choose the best one together and ask it from our guests.
In his classic text from 1986, "No Silver Bullet", Frederick Brooks (http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~cah/G51ISS/Documents/NoSilverBullet.html) lists promising technical developments for solving either the "essential" (inherent difficulties in formulation of conceptual structures) or "accidental" (difficulties in representing conceptual structures in code) problems of software development. He lists high-level languages, OOP, AI, expert systems and others, including program verification as promising future candidates for the silver bullet.
ReplyDeleteCould you (guest lecturers / sherpas / everyone) comment on the "Program verification" paragraph from the perspective of a 'modern' tester? How much have you, as a tester in real-world projects, influenced "eliminating the errors at the source, in the system-design phase"? Do you agree with Brooks' claim that "The technology does not promise, however, to save labor."? How much should a tester concentrate effort on testing/verifying the software before/during implementation; how much is practical/possible?
Finally, is testing/verification an essential or accidental problem of software development - also, is it a .50 silver bullet for solving either productivity, reliability or simplicity?