1. A Brief History
of
Software Testing

2. 2002
• Test Driven Development is coined
by Kent Beck
• A way of writing software in which the
tests are written before the code

3. 1987
• "Test, then code"
• Motto on the lapel pin of SQE as worn
during the Fourth International
Conference on Software Testing,
Washington DC.

4. 1978
• Measures for test coverage get defined
• In a paper titled Testing Software Design
Modeled by Finite-State Machines, by
Tsun S. Chow

5. • "One should not first make the program
and then prove its correctness"
• A quote by Edsger W. Dijkstra during his
lecture titled The Humble Programmer
1972

6. • "Daniel D. McCracken writes the first
general textbook on computer
programming
• Advises using break points in the
program so the functioning can be
checked
1957

7. 1949
• Alan Turing proposed that a programmer
should make definitive assertions that
should pass when run
• Not so different from assert_true

8. 1889
• The first known example of the term bug
to describe a system fault
• "Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up
the two previous nights discovering 'a
bug' in his phonograph - an expression
for solving a difficulty, and implying that
some imaginary insect has secreted
itself inside and is causing all the
trouble."

9. References
http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/was-the-first-computer-bug-a-real-insect
http://www.testingreferences.com/testinghistory.php
http://www.softwaretestpro.com/Item/4537/History-of-Ideas-in-
Software-Testing/Agile-Performance-Automation-Metrics-Development-Acceptance-
Exploratory-Functional-Integration-Process-Software-Strategy-Testing-Teams-Unit-
Six-Sigma-selenium-Web