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Old 05-04-2006, 06:03 AM   #15 (permalink)
Sep102
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Redmond, WA
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Hey, I get to quote Dijkstra, neat:

Quote:
Program testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence.
I just felt the need to reiterate the point that CEO was making, knowing its importance and truth in programming, you can test all you want, all that you've shown is that for that given test case, either no bugs were present or no bugs were noticed to be present, nothing else.

If we could, we'd test our code infinitely or formally validate all of our code to ensure its correctness (so long as we do not make mistakes in doing so), so, eventually, there's really nothing more one can do than to toss it into production and hope it works the way it should and fix it when it doesn't (or label the bug as a new, unexpected feature).
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