BSoD in standardized tests (Epstein, RISKS-24.67)

[Martyn Thomas]

Jeremy Epstein wrote " ...the RISKS of relying on systems that may not have
been fully tested are pretty obvious."

This comes up far too often.

How would you know a system had been fully tested?
How long would it take?
Can you think of a better way to avoid system failures than test-and-fix for a period of decades or more?

Testing is important for two main reasons:

to try to validate the assumptions you have made about the system's
environment; to detect systems that are egregiously bad, so that you can
scrap them and start again.

Computer scientists and programmers were saying all this 25 years ago. We
won't improve much on the current failure rates of projects until we accept
it, and act on it.

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