Comments on: Software testing book recommendations

Question: Software testing book recommendations

octothorpe — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 04:45:51 -0800

I'm looking for a good book or books on software testing and test development.

I've been working as a software tester and/or test developer for eight years now but I still feel like I don't quite know what I'm doing. Can anyone recommend a good book or books for designing tests? Amazon lists 492 books on the subject but I didn't want to just start buying blindly.

The product that I test is a distributed file system/high-speed storage system so this is all scripted non-gui testing. Mostly my issue is that the tests that I develop and run don't seem to do a very good job of actually finding bugs in the product. I have no problems writing base cases but don't do very well in coming up with interesting corner cases that are more likely to break the product.

By: lunchbox

lunchbox — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 06:25:39 -0800

The Pragmatic Programmer is a good basic guide, but you might be looking for something more in-depth.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:31:56 -0800

A reallly good place to start is to read the archive of Joel Spolsky's blog. Lots and lots of really key insights about software development from a guy who really does know his stuff.

His books are worthwhile, too.

By: bleary

bleary — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:33:59 -0800

Those aren't in depth testing books. cotothorpe would get more from thumbing through the references on the wikipedia page for software testing or searching comp.software.testing for book recommendations (that looks like a good thread).

By: bleary

bleary — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:46:07 -0800

Look into model based testing methods. Testing Object Oriented Systems covers that and more (it's one of the books listed off the wiki page). (disclaimer: I used to work for the author)