HW26: Chapter 24

Ex 24.6 Explain why program inspections are an effective technique for discovering errors in a program. What types of error are unlikely to be discovered through inspections?

They are effective because they are rather inexpensive as they involve team members from different backgrounds who make careful line-by-line review of the source code.  They look for problems and defects and describe them at an inspection meeting.  These can range from anomalies in the code to outright logical errors.  In one study (Fagan 1986) it was found that about 60% of the errors in a program were found during code inspection, that’s pretty effective.

What I think inspections don’t uncover is how the program will perform in the system environment it was intended for because this is usually not uncovered until either a) there is a very similar test environment that mimics the production environment very closely and has all the other programs and components running there or b) the program is let loose on the production environment after passing its successful tests.  Sometimes it isn’t until this point that other mistakes in design or coding will be discovered as well.