“Why do we never have time to do anything well, but there is always time for a change?”

There is an opinion that the first software error was discovered at the Dawn of The Computer Age when an attempt to launch the Whirlwind I failed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A furious inspection of the installation, connections and equipment did not reveal any malfunctions. Finally, already desperate, the people decided to check the program, which is a small strip of paper tape. And the error was found in it – in this programming Pandora’s box, a source of inevitable, unforeseen and extensive problems and troubles which plagued the future generations of programmers, and these were caused by program errors.

The task of any tester is to find the greatest number of errors, so he should be well aware of the most common errors and be able to find them in a very short period of time. The remaining errors, which are not typical, are detected only by carefully created test suites. However, it does not follow from this that it is not necessary to create tests for standard errors.

Software quality assurance companies are waiting for you to submit your development project to them for consideration so that to ensure its success and accuracy.

Program errors receive different classifications according to their severity. The ability to distinguish these will help to focus our efforts in the right direction to be successful in the test process.

Classification of errors

To classify errors, we must define the term “error”.

An error is a discrepancy between the calculated, observed and actual, given or theoretically correct result.

This definition of “error” term is not universal, since it is more suitable for the term “program error”. In the programming technology there are not only software errors, but also software development mistakes, for example, documentation errors. But we will still be interested in software errors.

So, by the time of occurrence software errors can be divided into three types:

1. structural errors;
2. compilation errors;
3. run-time errors.

P.S. In ancient Greek mythology, Pandora is a girl, created from earth and water by the God of blacksmiths – Hephaestus. The supreme God Zeus gave her a box containing all the human misfortunes and evils that she unknowingly and accidentally set free, opening the curtain out of the curiosity; hence the “box of Pandora” – the source of all disasters.

So, the moral of the fable is none of us should be extremely long-nosed, and always keep own nose clean…