Boris Beizer - Collected Quotes

"A design remedy that prevents bugs is always preferable to a test method that discovers them." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"A test that reveals a bug has succeeded, not failed." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Extra features were once considered desirable. We now recognize that 'free' features are rarely free. Any increase in generality that does not contribute to reliability, modularity, maintainability, and robustness should be suspected." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"More than the act of testing, the act of designing tests is one of the best bug preventers known. The thinking that must be done to create a useful test can discover and eliminate bugs before they are coded - indeed, test-design thinking can discover and eliminate bugs at every stage in the creation of software, from conception to specification, to design, coding and the rest."  (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Programmers are responsible for software quality - quality in their own work, quality in the products that incorporate their work, and quality at the interfaces between components. Quality has never been and will never be tested in. The responsibility is both moral and professional." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Testing proves a programmer’s failure. Debugging is the programmer’s vindication." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"First law: The pesticide paradox. Every method you use to prevent or find bugs leaves a residue of subtler bugs against which those methods are ineffective."  (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Second law: The complexity barrier. Software complexity (and therefore that of bugs) grows to the limits of our ability to manage that complexity." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Software never was perfect and won't get perfect. But is that a license to create garbage? The missing ingredient is our reluctance to quantify quality." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"Third law: Code migrates to data. Because of this law there is increasing awareness that bugs in code are only half the battle and that data problems should be given equal attention."  (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)

"The most common kind of coding bug, and often considered the least harmful, are documentation bugs (i.e., erroneous comments). Although many documentation bugs are simple spelling errors or the result of poor writing, many are actual errors - that is, misleading or erroneous comments. We can no longer afford to discount such bugs, because their consequences are as great as 'true' coding errors. Today programming labor is dominated by maintenance. This will increase as software becomes even longer-lived. Documentation bugs lead to incorrect maintenance actions and therefore cause the insertion of other bugs." (Boris Beizer, "Software Testing Techniques", 1990)