Testability Explorer: Using Byte-Code Analysis to Engineer Lasting Social Changes in an Organization’s Software Development Process. (Or How to Get Developers to Write Testable Code)

Presented at 2008 OOPSLA by Miško Hevery a Best Practices Coach @ Google

Abstract

Testability Explorer is an open-source tool that identifies hard-to-test Java code. Testability Explorer provides a repeatable objective metric of “testability.” This metric becomes a key component of engineering a social change within an organization of developers. The Testability Explorer report provides actionable information to developers which can be used as (1) measure of progress towards a goal and (2) a guide to refactoring towards a more testable code-base.
Keywords: unit-testing; testability; refactoring; byte-code analysis; social engineering.

Lawrence Winkler has two libraries. One is a traditional one, a library of information with new books and some more than 100 years old. The other library is now just a library of data, which was 3 books he had paid $100 for. What happened? Technological upgrades have degraded his books into unintelligible digital goobledegook. Now he is trying to highlight the dangers of storing information only in a digital form. In May, he had the 69th comment on a post about ebooks and copyright. In October, he had the 10th comment on a post about Amazon pushing their e-book device.