Software Testing

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testing

raghugaddipati05@gmail.com

2007-09-16, 4:41 am

who is the father of testing ?

H. S. Lahman

2007-09-16, 7:22 pm

Responding to Raghugaddipati05...

> who is the father of testing ?

As I recall it was a fellow named Og who first checked the way a flint
shard was attached to a shaft by pressing the tip against a rock.

*************
There is nothing wrong with me that could
not be cured by a capful of Drano.

H. S. Lahman
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abu bakar siddiq

2007-09-17, 4:30 am

Hi,
Glenfold Mayers is considered as Father of Testing.

Geek

2007-09-17, 4:30 am

On Sep 17, 7:39 am, abu bakar siddiq <sab...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Glenfold Mayers is considered as Father of Testing.

Thats right, if I read an article some time back and it was mentioned
that he was the first person to seperate testing from debugging. Prior
to that, testing and debugging was considered same.

Disclaimer : This information is based on my memory, so do not claim
that it is absolutely right.

Regards,
G

[url]WWW.TestingG

.Com[/url]

Boris Beizer

2007-09-17, 7:20 pm

"abu bakar siddiq" <sabsaq@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1190011142.213994.129210@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
> Glenfold Mayers is considered as Father of Testing.
>
The correct name is "Glenford Myers."

Glenn would probably be the first to deny such patrimony. Glen is rightly
credited as the first to publish a small , but very influential book devoted
entirely to testing : "The Art of Software Testing." However, he was not
the first to distinguish between testing and debugging. That distinction
goes back to the earliest days of software development and occurred to many
persons independently. The first discussion of testing and debugging
predates computers by almost a century, in the memoirs of lady .Ada
Lovelace (wife of the poet Percy Lovelace} who wrote software for Babbages
(never completed ) mechanical computer. Ada Lovelace is properly credited
as the first programmer

Boris Beizer (always lurking)

H. S. Lahman

2007-09-17, 7:20 pm

Responding to Siddiq...

> Glenfold Mayers is considered as Father of Testing.

By whom? It is curious that anyone publishing in the mid-'70s could be
regarded as the father of a field that had been very active since the
'40s. That is kind of like saying Einstein was the father of physics.

BTW, it is Glenford Myers.

*************
There is nothing wrong with me that could
not be cured by a capful of Drano.

H. S. Lahman
hsl@pathfindermda.com
Pathfinder Solutions
http://www.pathfindermda.com
blog: http://pathfinderpeople.blogs.com/hslahman
"Model-Based Translation: The Next Step in Agile Development". Email
info@pathfindermda.com for your copy.
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H. S. Lahman

2007-09-17, 7:20 pm

Responding to G

...

>
>
> Thats right, if I read an article some time back and it was mentioned
> that he was the first person to seperate testing from debugging. Prior
> to that, testing and debugging was considered same.

I'm afraid not. I did my first program on a plugboard in '57 and testing
was regarded as a separate activity at that time. And it was already a
standalone profession in large shops like IBM.

*************
There is nothing wrong with me that could
not be cured by a capful of Drano.

H. S. Lahman
hsl@pathfindermda.com
Pathfinder Solutions
http://www.pathfindermda.com
blog: http://pathfinderpeople.blogs.com/hslahman
"Model-Based Translation: The Next Step in Agile Development". Email
info@pathfindermda.com for your copy.
Pathfinder is hiring:
http://www.pathfindermda.com/about_us/careers_pos3.php.
(888)OOA-PATH

Michael Bolton

2007-09-17, 7:20 pm

On Sep 16, 4:51 am, raghugaddipat...@gmail.com wrote:
> who is the father of testing ?

That's kind of a fatuous question.

Glenford Myers gets a lot of appropriate credit in the software world
for having written the first book-length treatment of the subject in
"The Art of Software Testing". Myers was only one of several
contemporaries--Dick Hamming, Jerry Weinberg were just a couple of
others--who were talking and writing seriously about testing for many
years before the book. But as H.S. says, right from the start, anyone
who programmed computers tested relentlessly. As Jerry Weinberg once
told me, "it was essential, because the equipment was so unreliable."

But testing existed a long time before that. If testing is
"questioning a product in order to evaluate it", then H.S.'s
suggestion about Og and the flint on the shaft is a plausible
candidate. Thales, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Sextus Empiricus, Francis
Bacon, David Hume, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig Wittgenstein... a bunch of
forgotten souls in the manufacturing world... essentially a whole lot
of people that today's software testers don't know much about, but
could learn from, could be accused in a paternity suit for software
testing. Ada Lovelace would be a good candidate too, as Boris
suggests, except that paternity would be an unlikely accusation in her
case. From Babbage's own account, she may have been the first to find
a bug in someone else's code.

I think, by the way, that when Boris mentions "Percy Lovelace", he is
perhaps conflating the poet Lord Byron (not Ada's husband, but her
father) with his contemporary, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (no
relation, neither by blood nor marriage, to Ada--but he WAS married to
Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein).

---Michael B., ex-English major

Edward

2007-09-17, 7:20 pm

On Sep 16, 1:51 am, raghugaddipat...@gmail.com wrote:
> who is the father of testing ?

For a while my thought was going to be to nominate Boris
Beizer for fatherhood, but upon reflection I think the honor
of being the father of testing would have to go to Ibn Al-
Haytham, 956-1039, who [according to Wikipedia, which is
sometimes even believable] first discovered [or invented] the
scientific method.

Which method can be loosely defined as systematically
extracting truth from a series of experiments.

Software testing is the systematic investigation of properties
of a software system for purposes of establishing that it is
working or not working. Software testing deals with the
accumulation and assessment of evidence, that is what your
"object under test" actually DOES. It's the scientific method
applied to software entities

This can be tied back to the kind of philosophy that is
involved in building sailing ships in a bottle -- at which it
is rumored Boris excels! -- a whole lot of time, a whole lot
of patience, a little bit of luck, and, pop, one beautiful
success!

-- Edward Miller

S Perryman

2007-09-18, 4:34 am

"Boris Beizer" <bbeizer@localnet.com> wrote in message
news:13et7tjqjhkhnb5@corp.supernews.com...

> "abu bakar siddiq" <sabsaq@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1190011142.213994.129210@y42g2000hsy.googlegroups.com...

[color=darkred]
> The correct name is "Glenford Myers."

> Glenn would probably be the first to deny such patrimony.

He may not be the root of the tree, but he is not IMHO that far from it.

Regards,
Steven Perryman

Boris Beizer

2007-09-18, 7:31 pm

"Edward" <Edward.F.Miller@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1190074454.745734.104540@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
> On Sep 16, 1:51 am, raghugaddipat...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> For a while my thought was going to be to nominate Boris
> Beizer for fatherhood, but upon reflection I think the honor
> of being the father of testing would have to go to Ibn Al-
> Haytham, 956-1039,

Tthereby, finally, after four decades, finally establishing software testing
as a legitimate endevour
-- for it is said " succcess has a thousand fathers, but failure ia an
orphan."
> Which method can be loosely defined as systematically
> extracting truth from a series of experiments.
>
> This can be tied back to the kind of philosophy that is
> involved in building sailing ships in a bottle -- at which it
> is rumored Boris excels!
[color=darkred]

Contrary to superficial appearances to the contrary, I have not really
retired. I am still, as I have always been a modeler: be it ships,
aircraft, software performance, mathematical, and for many years as a
passionate advocate and expositor of model-based testing.
Early in my career I worked on aircraft models used in wind tunnel
testing. It is not generally known but one of the most important reasons
for the Wright brother's success was their invention of the wind tunnel and
their extensive experimentation with wind tunnel models.
Although we are cursed with continual blasts of hot air in this testing
business we have yet to have the genius to invent the software wind tunnel.

Boris Bizer

Michael Bolton

2007-09-18, 10:21 pm

> Although we are cursed with continual blasts of hot air in this testing
> business we have yet to have the genius to invent the software wind tunnel.

I'd suggest that we have lots of wind tunnels, but too few people with
the skills to use them effectively--and far too few skilled test
pilots for serious flight testing.

Not only that, but many planes satisfy the basic criteria of flying.
But airlines try to cram too many people into seats that are too small
and uncomfortable--and when those people arrive at their destinations,
their luggage seems to have gone elsewhere.

Yes, the software business DOES have a lot in common with aviation.

---Michael B.

Shrinik

2007-09-19, 4:39 am

Testing is all about thinking, questioning, and reasoning - all of
mind game.

In my opinion people like Aryabhata, Gr

philosophical trio
Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and scientific thinkers like Copernicus,
Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Edison and many more are real fathers
of testing.

Much of thinking that goes in software testing can be attributed to
these people.

Shrini

Boris Beizer

2007-09-19, 7:21 pm

"Shrinik" <Shrinik@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1190180310.448075.96790@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> Testing is all about thinking, questioning, and reasoning - all of
> mind game.
>
> In my opinion people like Aryabhata, Gr

philosophical trio
> Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and scientific thinkers like Copernicus,
> Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Edison and many more are real fathers
> of testing.
>
>I certainly would not include Edison. He was an inveterate, non-scientific
>tinkerer. More like a hacker than a scientist. It is unfortunate that
>too many people who puport to test software do so with the brute force
>approach of try everything." Perhaps I will grant Edison the paternity of
>our testing bastard child :"Dumb monkey testing." Aristotle, Socrates
>Plato are clearly out, because they did not believe in controlled
>experiments and only spun their theories and views of the world based on
>pure thought and logic. They might be considered predecessors of formal
>proofs of correctness, which has little to do with software quality.
>Galileo (especially) and Roger Bacon qualify as early exponents of
>experimental science. Newton is iffy because most of his experimental
>work dealt with alchemy and a decades long attempt to change lead into
>gold.. Maybe he qualifies after all, sine so much of testing is
>unfortunately devoted to an attempt to change manure into gold. If you
>want philosophical predecessors, you had better look to modern philosophy,
>especially empiricist like Mills and the logical positivist.

Boris Beizer

Allen Fisher

2007-09-21, 7:19 pm

> On Sep 17, 7:39 am, abu bakar siddiq <sab...@gmail.com> wrote:

I wonder what a google search would tell you.

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