Design is Testability

Abstract

For Software Engineering practitioners, the past 10 years have seen an explosive rise in the adoption of continuous integration systems and automated software testing. Having sufficient test coverage is now considered key to maintaining enough control of large software systems to make changes quickly and reliably. Although we’ve started to write tests, there is still a lot to learn about how to test well - with 40 years of invention and innovation in test strategies and technologies, it’s hard to know what tools are appropriate when testing a given interface. Even among industry leaders, a lot of good testing is still a matter of “I’ll know it when I see it.” In this talk I’ll argue that long-ignored concepts from software design are essential in understanding how to test appropriately. Along the way I’ll tie together ideas and technologies from both design and testing: control, contracts, and design qualities help us understand how best to use unit tests, dynamic analysis, fuzzing, and property-based testing approaches.

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