Comment THERE'S ONLY ONE SOLUTION (Score 1) 472
Pardon the shouting, but I mean it. Testing as is mostly done in the coding shops is the detection of what bugs got introduced in the code. Quality code production doesn't mean finding the flaws, but keeping them from occurring in the first place. There is only one way to accomplish this, and that is to make testing a design criterion. There is no substitute for specifying design invariants and coding to assure them. This is where specification languages like Z come in handy, and why the Eiffel wankers are so in love with their language.
All locating failures does is locate failures; it does not ensure success. The only way to ensure success of a system of any complexity is to define what correct operation is and ensure it. There are brainiacs from the planet Smartron-Five that are good enough at their formal logic to actually prove whether a piece of code is correct or not. That's great if you can do it, otherwise, you're stuck with ASSERTs or JUnit or somesuch. But you can't do any of that meaningfully without a rigorous understanding of what it truly means when you say "it works".
All locating failures does is locate failures; it does not ensure success. The only way to ensure success of a system of any complexity is to define what correct operation is and ensure it. There are brainiacs from the planet Smartron-Five that are good enough at their formal logic to actually prove whether a piece of code is correct or not. That's great if you can do it, otherwise, you're stuck with ASSERTs or JUnit or somesuch. But you can't do any of that meaningfully without a rigorous understanding of what it truly means when you say "it works".
