The Art of Software Testing Review

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(More customer reviews)It's hard to give the appropriate number of stars to this edition. On the one hand, this is one of the classics of the field, and deservedly so. In it's first edition, this may have been the first great book on testing, and there is something about the "first great book" on any topic that makes it a lasting value decades later: DeMarco on Structured Analysis, Brooks on the wicked complexity of software project management, Booch on object-oriented design, K&R on C. And so I think it goes with The Art of Software Testing. It's a short book, and full of good ideas that will stay with you.
But.
This revised edition is simply a terrible value. At the full list price, you'd be paying something like fifty cents a page...and, let me tell you, a book had better revolutionize my life for that kind of money. I'm a dedicated capitalist sell-out software developer, but this kind of pricing arouses even _my_ hacker sensibilities. Also, the value of the revision is questionable: there may be a chapter on Extreme Programming, but it seems to me that the best material in this book is still the classic text that survives from the 1st ed. So, my recommendation is that you simply _buy_ the first edition, new or used, at a fraction of the price. Then, you get nearly all of the benefit, plus the cachet of having the "classic" on your shelf. You can put it right next to "The C Programming Language" and "The Mythical Man-Month." Then, your visitors will know you're a serious software developer...and, you know what? They'll probably be right.
I also like and recommend Kaner, Falk and Nguyen, "Testing Computer Software," for a more in-depth and up-to-date treatment of testing issues.

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Provides a practical rather than theoretical discussion of the purpose and nature of software testing. Emphasizes methodologies for the design of effective test cases. Comprehensively covers psychological and economic principles, managerial aspects of testing, test tools, high-order testing, code inspections, and debugging. Extensive bibliography. Programmers at all levels, and programming students, will find this reference work indispensible.

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