History of software testing

“Software testing is the process of running a program with the intention of finding errors”— Glenford J. Myers.

The testing phase of a product is today one of the most important tasks of any business, not only in the world of software. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the toys we buy and even the toothpaste we use must go through multiple and meticulous tests that guarantee quality before being placed in the hands of the customer.

The objective of this phase is to guarantee a minimum of quality to avoid that the client finds failures in the product that can cause a loss of confidence in the company, a bad public image and in some cases, penalties worth millions of dollars, as happened with Samsung with the model Galaxy Note 7 and its defective and explosive batteries.

But, as could not be otherwise, the origin of this need for quality is merely economic. The main reason why this market starts to grow so much is due to the high costs involved in correcting these failures in advanced stages, however, detecting them in early stages is very profitable..

Although terms such as “testing” or “quality testing” may seem modern, software testing has been carried out and evolved since the beginning of computing, differentiating 5 important periods according to the most influential test models:

Debugging period (1947–1956)

In 1947, the terms “bug” and “debugging” were coined. Grace Murray, a Harvard University scientist who worked with the Mark II computer, detected that a moth had got stuck in a relay causing it not to make contact. She detailed the incident in the work log, pasting the moth with tape as evidence and referring to the moth as the “bug” causing the error, and to the action of eliminating the error as “debugging”.

At that time, the tests were focused on the hardware because it was not as developed as today and its reliability was essential for the proper functioning of the software. The term debugging was associated with the application of a patch for a particular bug as a phase within the stage of software development, and that is why the tests that were performed were only of a corrective nature by taking certain measures in order to make the program work.