I just turn 60 yesterday. It becomes a time for reflection.
I have been working with computers, software, and testing/V&V for 35 years. They have changed. We have moved from buying minutes on the CPU, punch cards for input, and big systems of 100,000 lines of code, to buying data transfer down loads, voice/GUI input, and smart phones with 12-20 million lines of code in them. It seems that everyone has a computer (or 2+) in the pocket.
But they are still buggy. Louis Black has a great bit on bugs in smart phones. My wife swears at them. I read articles that say “coders and companies still are not testing enough (at all?) before fielding the software”. So maybe things have not changed that much.
My postings, book (September), and soon to be released web site offer attacks and test approaches that anyone can use. For most of my 35 years, I have advised many of the same thoughts (test early, everyone tests, use many techniques, etc.) Much of this is not new. Some people learn from our past and get better software. Some people do NOT learn from our past and reinvent the wheel over and over. Which type of person are you?
breakingembeddedsoftware 