Testing as a Mental Discipline: Practical Methods for Affecting Developer Behavior

Testing is traditionally defined as "the execution of a program with the intent of finding errors."[1] This core definition, though useful, does not provide educators with an effective means to communicate either the goals or the value of software testing. "Testing and test design, as part of quality assurance, should also focus on bug prevention." [2] Similarly, the related mantra to "test, then code\´ has found a resonant home in the agile software development community (e.g., TDD: Test-Driven Development). [3]