Awesome Bug Manifesto: Teaching an Engaging and Inspiring Course on Software Testing (Position Paper)

Abstract

Although testing software is paramount to safeguard our digitizing society, students are reluctant to consider a career in the field. A reason could be that dedicated courses on software testing are rare. However, even when such a course exists, students perceive testing as a boring, unrewarding and even dogmatic chore. For more than 10 years, we have been teaching a software testing course at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Driven by our belief that an abundant exposure to software bugs makes good testers, we experimented with many ideas to engage students and make them love the topic. The most unorthodox, yet effective interventions we are proud of, were: (1) to scare students by analyzing past, software-related accidents, such as Therac-25 or Boeing 737-MAX; (2) to thrill them using bug-hunting gamification, enabled by the in-house developed VU-BugZoo; (3) to trust them an end-to-end testing of safety-critical software- intensive systems, such as model trains, automatic insulin pumps and even radiotherapy facilities, and (4) to inspire their career, by opening a dialog with test professionals from industry. The result is a mature course, read yearly by 50 computer science graduates, where almost 80% of the participants find the topic interesting and challenging, and 40% consider a future carrier in testing. These positive results make us confident that we found a formula that works. In this position paper, we would like to share our innovative ideas and lessons learned. Also in the future, we will stay committed to educate enthusiastic and responsible software testers.