Unit Testing Kills Bugs Best; C “Overtakes” Java

Unit Testing Best Bug Killer

According to a new developer survey from Typemock, a vendor of unit-testing solutions, over 90 percent of developers say that unit testing is effective in reducing software bugs -- more so than integration testing, pair programming, and quality assurance. The survey also found that 80 percent of respondents acknowledge that developers are responsible for bugs; 8 percent said it was up to QA.

Finding and fixing bugs is time consuming: 48 percent of developers said that they spend up to 5 hours each week performing that task; 38 percent said they spend up to 10 hours a week, and 12 percent devote more than 10 hours a week to the chore. Typemock says that customers of its Typemock Team Mate, which tracks developers’ actual usage, actually spend between 50 and 55 percent of their workweek using the debugger.

C “Overtakes” Java as Most Popular Language

TIOBE, a software quality assessment and tracking company, has released an update to its “Programming Community Index,” noting that the long-term popularity of the C programming language has surpassed the popularity of long-in-decline Java. “Although it is expected that Java will not decline much further due to the popularity of the Android platform, C is able to remain number one for at least another couple of months.”

The full report, including trend lines and a list of the top 50 languages, can be found here.

-- James E. Powell
Editorial Director, ESJ

Posted by Jim Powell on 04/09/2012