HW14:Testing Reflections

Testing, while not regarded as "sexy," is an important component of software development. The author discusses functional and structural testing. Functional testing involves coming up with test cases and trying to break the code after it is written. This is the type of testing I am the most familiar with. However, structural testing makes the tests a vital part of the software itself and the strategy the developer uses while building the program. This takes a lot of work and testing starts before writing the functional part of the program.

Because of this extra work, the author says there needs to be accountability in development. If there are little to no consequences for not completely testing and fixing software before its released, the quality of software will decline. The users and companies that employ developers need to make sure the developers are doing their due diligence and they test their code.

This brings us to the author's next big point: complex systems can never be completely tested. There are often too many cases and situations that could never be tested because we don't know they exist while testing.