CWI Lectures - Understanding Software
Speaker
Title
The Test Case as an Executable Example
Abstract
When explaining or trying to understand a given concept, few means are more effective than a simple example. In this presentation, we look at the role of examples in software understanding. In particular, we elaborate the metaphor of a test as an executable example. We study implications on test size, test case quality attributes, test coverage, test suite understanding, as well as on our choice of research methods. Our findings are based on our empirical research in the area of unit and integration testing of plug-in architectures.
Bio
Arie van Deursen is full professor at Delft University of Technology, where he is leading the Software Engineering Research Group. His research interests include software testing, empirical methods, software architecture, end user programming, and collaborative software development. He holds an MSc degree from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (1990) and a PhD degree from the Universiteit van Amsterdam (1994). He was general chair of the 8th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR'11) and is program co-chair of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC'12) as well as of the ICSE 2013 New Ideas and Emerging Research track (NIER'13).
