Introduction to Software Testing

Working on engineering foundations

• No one denies that innovation and invention are vital, but we also need to work on the engineering foundations too:
• criteria for evaluation
• means of comparison
• theoretical limits and capabilities
• means of production
• underlying rules, principles, and structure
• We need mathematical models and careful experimentation (real-world validation)!

Questioning new methods

• “Formal methods are math. Math is good. Therefore, formal methods will improve software quality.”
• It is not clear that this is true!
• What kinds of FM?
• Training of practitioners?
• Political issues? Costs? Scale?
• Tool maturity and appropriateness?
• Are resulting systems better? safer? smaller? bigger? more understandable? more opaque?