Future of Software Testing

His ears were ringing, his head throbbing with pain. As he came to his senses, he looked around the trashed cockpit, trying to locate a way out. He could not detect any movements behind him; probably the co-pilot was still knocked out by the crash, or even worse: dead. The ejection sequence had never initiated; after the hydraulic failure, the plane had simply not responded to any directives. A week later after he had been rescued from the crash site, the pilot learnt that the hydraulic failure had lead to the software failure, which had resulted in the crash. If the software had been tested more rigorously, the software would have switched to the backup hydraulic system, leading to a safe return of the air craft and its pilots.

It is common knowledge that most of our algorithms cannot be mathematically proven. During the development and once the software is designed, it is tested for most types of possible bugs, but not all of them. Re-creating all types of possible conditions and events is just not economically or technologically feasible. Thus software testing is one of the most important branches of computer programming, for one has to check the software of the appropriate number of tests, with which the software programmed, can be used without too much un-reliability for the end user. Software testing has evolved over the years from in-source testing to outsource testing. Currently a new testing phase is being deployed, known as crowd sourcing, which allows testers all over the world to test different softwares being developed on different platforms, multiple environments and on a wide range of hardware.

However this does not end here. Crowd sourcing may be far better than out sourcing in terms of number of testers being used and the types of environments it is tested on, but it is still not effective enough. The first problem it faces is the lack of information provided by the software about some of the errors. This becomes a big problem, as the bug in... [continues]

Read full essay