The Art of Software Testing (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "Before beginning the book, it is strongly recommended that you take the following short test..." (more)
Key Phrases: exhaustive path testing, input condition specifies, nonincremental testing, New York, Software Eng, Computer Software Reliability (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Provides a practical rather than theoretical discussion of the purpose and nature of software testing. Emphasizes methodologies for the design of effective test cases. Comprehensively covers psychological and economic principles, managerial aspects of testing, test tools, high-order testing, code inspections, and debugging. Extensive bibliography. Programmers at all levels, and programming students, will find this reference work indispensible.

From the Publisher

Provides a practical rather than theoretical discussion of the purpose and nature of software testing. Emphasizes methodologies for the design of effective test cases. Comprehensively covers psychological and economic principles, managerial aspects of testing, test tools, high-order testing, code inspections, and debugging. Extensive bibliography. Programmers at all levels, and programming students, will find this reference work indispensible.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (February 20, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471043281
• ISBN-13: 978-0471043287
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #738,909 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Updated classic--Inadequate Value for the Money, June 29, 2006

By	Craig Kenneth Bryant (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Art of Software Testing, Second Edition (Hardcover)

It's hard to give the appropriate number of stars to this edition. On the one hand, this is one of the classics of the field, and deservedly so. In it's first edition, this may have been the first great book on testing, and there is something about the "first great book" on any topic that makes it a lasting value decades later: DeMarco on Structured Analysis, Brooks on the wicked complexity of software project management, Booch on object-oriented design, K&R on C. And so I think it goes with The Art of Software Testing. It's a short book, and full of good ideas that will stay with you.

But.

This revised edition is simply a terrible value. At the full list price, you'd be paying something like fifty cents a page...and, let me tell you, a book had better revolutionize my life for that kind of money. I'm a dedicated capitalist sell-out software developer, but this kind of pricing arouses even _my_ hacker sensibilities. Also, the value of the revision is questionable: there may be a chapter on Extreme Programming, but it seems to me that the best material in this book is still the classic text that survives from the 1st ed. So, my recommendation is that you simply _buy_ the first edition, new or used, at a fraction of the price. Then, you get nearly all of the benefit, plus the cachet of having the "classic" on your shelf. You can put it right next to "The C Programming Language" and "The Mythical Man-Month." Then, your visitors will know you're a serious software developer...and, you know what? They'll probably be right.

I also like and recommend Kaner, Falk and Nguyen, "Testing Computer Software," for a more in-depth and up-to-date treatment of testing issues.

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic that is still useful, June 1, 2000

By	Cem Kaner, J.D, Ph.D. (Palm Bay, FL United States) - See all my reviews

......... this is probably not the first book that you would buy about software testing.

However, the book is a classic and it deserves a place on a serious tester's bookshelf.

Its examples are dated, I think its description of cause-effect graphing is incomprehensible, and its catalog of test types in the pages from 103 forward is sketchy.

The book is valuable because its presentation of the basic issues is clear, concise, and persuasive. The discussion of equivalence classes and boundaries is remarkably clear. When we wrote Testing Computer Software, one of our goals was to handle this important topic as clearly and crisply as Myers. That was a challenge, and I'm not sure we succeeded. (Jorgensen's Software Testing: A Craftsman's Approach does a great job with this topic.) The discussion of bias (one of the issues in the psychology of testing) is also well done.

In short, the first 103 pages of the book are some of the best writing in the field and have had a powerful influence on the writers who came later. Reading them in the original will often, I suspect, make subsequent presentations clearer and more meaningful.

-- Cem Kaner (senior author: Testing Computer Software)

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Must Have" Reference in Every Software Tester's Library, September 7, 2000

By	Just a Dude "Really" (San Diego, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This is by far the most concise and insightful book I've ever read about code level testing. It does not have all the nitty gritty details of every which method ever invented, nor does go into details about the paperwork. But the lists of principles and checklists are priceless.

I would not recommend this book for beginners since it is hard for inexperienced testers to pick out the gems from the dated items.

I agree with a previous review that stated that the first hundred or so pages are must reads. Don't be put off by the $ per page ratio. This book is worth every penny.