Exploratory Software Testing

Chapter 8. The Future of Software Testing

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

—Alan Kay

Welcome to the Future

Modern software testing is a far cry from the discipline as practiced in the past. It has evolved and changed a great deal since the middle part of the last century, when the first programs were being written.

In the early days of computer programming, the same people who wrote software were the ones who tested it. Programs were small and by today’s standards very simple. They were algorithms, physics problems really, that were often completely specified (as most mathematical algorithms tend to be), meant only to be run on a single computer in a very controlled environment and used by people who ...