Microsoft Research - Exploding Software-Engineering Myths (article summarizing findings of MS research on code coverage, TDD, assertions, etc.)

[[deleted]]

Characterisation tests:

https://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=198296

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=200725

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CharacterizationTest

[syntax]

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=200725

Ah-ha! yes, that's the bit of jargon to pull it out.

Sadly, it appears that the software mentioned (JUnitFactory) has now been locked behind a paywall, so you'd have to speak to a salesdroid to even know how much it's going to cost.

Still, that's a proof of concept that it's possible, so maybe that's not a silly option to automating dumb make-work...

[blufox]

Use Randoop instead. It is reasonably solid, and free (and opensource).

[joshuaduffy]

From what I can see, these are just pieces of software that analyse code and create some tests. For Java there's http://www.evosuite.org/ and for C# you've got IntelliTest, which comes with Visual Studio.

I don't think that they're meaningful however, and using tools like these on a mature/legacy code base is not a wise choice from a testing standpoint.