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Testing/Checking Java Programs...

New: O'Reilly has released my videocast Learning Path on Java Testing For Developers Get it while it's hot!

It's beyond twenty years since Tim O'Reilly published my little book Checking C Programs with Lint. So much has changed! In those days short books went out on paper as Nutshell Books; now they go out as Short Cut ebooks. In those days C was the leading programming language; today Java is one of the leaders, with others nipping at its heels. But one thing hasn't changed, and it hasn't changed since the days of Grace Murray Hopper: programs still have bugs. Programmers still write code with bugs. Users still find bugs in software.

While Java does a lot to prevent bugs from forming (Java's garbage collection gets rid of the majority of memory allocation and deallocation bugs), it certainly does not do everything. There is still room for additional tools to help you find bugs in your software, and for a book that tells you about some of these tools.

So. This site is about my O'Reilly e-book in this area, Checking Java Programs with Open Source Tools, and the new Java Testing For Developers videocast series from O'Reilly Media.

The book covers a number of topics but the major ones are:

  1. Static Source Code Checking with PMD
  2. Static Byte Code Checking with FindBugs
  3. Dynamic Execution Checking with NASA Java Pathfinder

Program Testing with JUnit is in the video class but not in the older book. There is also a short section on it in my Java Cookbook.