Monday, May 29, 2023

Software Testing Principles and ChatGPT

 In a recent discussion on linkedin - a user comments saying 

"The power of ChatGPT as an aid to software testing is rather powerful. It shouldn’t be used as outright truth but has great knowledge in software testing principles,,,,"

The discussion was about ChatGPT but what attracted me was statement on "software testing principles"

Software testing is a heuristic based body of knowledge. It has no principles but thumb rules that work sometimes and fail sometimes. Software testing in practice depends upon an experienced and skilled human tester to apply and harness the power of these heuristics. Most importantly - human tester uses the heuristics as per the context. Context is made from people, their motivations, larger social/business/cultural environment they are in, technology and others. You can see how deep and complex is the web....

ChatGPT has "memory" and it can recall through its connections and training - can offer "suggestions" to a human tester. Thats where its role ends....human tester takes over from that point onwards.

Software testing is not a science to have principles ( I am not sure how many feel that science is not heuristics based) but is surely engineering as lots what is done in engineering is heuristics based.

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