History of Software Testing

History of Software Testing

“Testing”, the act, is not something new; it has been here since ages. May be the term “Testing” was not used then. History is very important for anything and everything. So does for “Software Testing”.

Initially testing started in the form of debugging; there was no clear difference between debugging and testing. D. Gelperin and W.C. Hetzel in 1988 classified the phases of software testing, which is as follows:

1.  Until 1956 – Debugging Oriented – where testing would mean the act of debugging 
2. 1957 – 1978 – Demonstration Oriented – where the difference between debugging and testing was made – we learn to test whether requirements are satisfied 
3. 1979 – 1982 – Destruction Oriented – where the aim was to break the code and find the error 
4. 1983 – 1987 – Evaluation Oriented – where the quality measure was evaluated throughout the Software Lifecycle 
5. 1988 – Present – Prevention Oriented – where we evaluate the quality of software by testing the requirements, breaking the code & finding faults and preventing the faults