View source for NA-MIC-kit-curriculum/Testing-Based Programming

= Introduction =

'''Testing-Based Programming''' is an software development methodology that relies on continuous and exhaustive testing as a scaffolding for facilitating rapid development.

The principle is very simple:



:    ''If you have an extensive test-suite that exercises all the capabilities of your software, you can make both swift and large scale changes to the code, and rely on the testing-suite to reveal immediately if any bug has been introduced by the changes.''



:    ''In the absence of a testing-suite, every change in the code has the potential of introducing new defects that will go unnoticed for a long time.''


As an illustration of what happens in a world without sufficient Testing:


: ''The national annual costs of an inadequate infrastructure for software testing is estimated to range from $22.2 to $59.5 billion. Over half of these costs are borne by software users in the form of error avoidance and mitigation activities.''



[http://www.nist.gov/director/prog-ofc/report02-3.pdf "The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing" NIST Report]

As a reference the annual budget of NIH is [http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/appropriations/part2.htm  $30 billion].