Dr. Dobb's Testing Articles

Ada 2012: Ada With Contracts

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:08:00 -0400

The most important new feature in Ada 2012 is support for contract-based programming, which adds more validation of mission-critical code to a language already famous for its focus on reliability.

Jolt Awards 2013: The Best Programmer Libraries

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:49:00 -0400

The best programmer libraries of the past year

The Death of Beta Testing?

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 08:08:00 -0400

Short release cycles, continuous deployment, automatic updates, and a fear of social media tattling on beta defects are causing vendors to forgo beta testing and find new ways to get useful user feedback.

Embedded print Statements != Debugging

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 09:40:00 -0500

Conflation of two concepts — true debugging and dumping variables to the console — encourages poor programming practices and harms codebases.

Why I Use Perl...and Will Continue to Do So

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:13:00 -0500

Despite Perl's steady decline in usage, its users continue their romance with the language's features.

Jolt Awards: Coding Tools

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 08:36:00 -0500

The best IDEs and coding tools of the past year

Testing Python and C# Code

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 04:48:00 -0500

Monkey patching and reflection are just a couple of ways to test complex systems.

Testing Complex C++ Systems

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 11:11:00 -0500

Some systems are so complex that they require non-traditional approaches to thoroughly test large code bases.

Improving Tests for Reliability

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 02:02:00 -0500

Netflix's CEO on achieving software reliability by use of quality gates that ensure correct operation.

Software Development in the Obama Campaign

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:28:00 -0500

A cobbled-together team of 40 developers built 200 apps in the cloud that could scale from hundreds to millions of users in minutes — and managed to meet their deadline with no major failure.

Debugging Memory in iOS Apps

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 08:19:00 -0500

Dangling pointers, double frees, memory leaks, and hogs — when it comes to writing apps for iOS, you've got to avoid these common pitfalls. Here's how!

What Exactly is DevOps?

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 02:58:00 -0500

The latest trend in software development is the culture of DevOps, in which developers partner with operations staff to assure that software runs with a minimum of problems.

You Are No Longer a Testing Expert

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 06:26:00 -0500

The testing and optimizing techniques of the past don't apply to mobile.

The Scourge of Error Handling

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:05:00 -0500

Return values and exceptions are both inadequate tools for handling errors. But we're stuck with them for the foreseeable future — just as we have been for decades.

Testing Browser Apps

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 03:10:00 -0500

The QUnit framework makes it easy to test Web apps directly in the browser. By showing the red/green results in the browser with links to the failing tests, it makes it possible to write, test, and correct quickly.

Pex: Microsoft Research's Unit Test Generator and Evaluator

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 02:47:00 -0500

Tired of grinding out unit tests by hand? Worried that you've missed a set of values to test for? Microsoft's little-known Pex is the answer.

Testing Complex Systems

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 00:30:00 -0500

Good design practices can save your system and your sanity

Getting DevOps Right: The Lay of the Land

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 07:20:00 -0400

DevOps means different things to different stakeholders, but the basic components are the same.

Jolt Awards: The Best Books

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 04:19:00 -0400

Six notable books that every serious programmer should read.

Unit Testing: Is There Really Any Debate Any Longer?

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:32:00 -0400

Continued resistance to unit tests says more about the organization than it does about the practice.

TDD: Is There Really Any Debate Any Longer?

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 08:07:00 -0400

A reader's response to the Dr. Dobb's editorial on the universal acceptance of unit testing wonders: Why not TDD, too?

End-To-End Developer Testing

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:16:00 -0400

Roy Martin from the Microsoft Visual Studio team explains how delivering modern software demands that quality be built in throughout all steps of the life cycle, from ideation through to operation.

The Secondary Effects of Automated Testing

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 06:54:00 -0400

The author of the classic "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" discusses the beneficial effects of automated testing on writing code, as well as some of the burdens the practice entails.

Saying No To Properties

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 07:56:00 -0400

Properties are rarely necessary and, in many cases, they make your classes hard to extend and difficult to debug. And they make code much larger and more complex than it needs to be.

Deploying Static Analysis

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 05:44:00 -0400

Static analysis is a cheap and easy way to find bugs, but it offers important challenges that tend to be more political than technical.