Robot testers invade Portland
March 15th, 2007 | Published in Google Testing
Software testing is tough. It can be exhausting, and there is rarely enough time to find all the important bugs. Wouldn't it be nice to have a staff of tireless servants working day and night to make you look good? Well, those days are here. On Thursday, March 22, I'll give a lunchtime presentation titled "How to Build Your Own Robot Army" for the Quality Assurance SIG of the Software Association of Oregon.
Two decades ago, machine time was expensive, so test suites had to run as quickly and efficiently as possible. Today, CPUs are cheap, so it becomes reasonable to move test creation to the shoulders of a test machine army. But we're not talking about the run-of-the-mill automated scripts that only do what you explicitly told them. We're talking about programs that create and execute tests you never thought of to find bugs you never dreamed of. From Orcs to Zergs to Droids to Cyborgs, this presentation will show how to create a robot test army using tools lying around on the Web. Most importantly, it will cover how to take appropriate credit for your army's work!