Using code analysis
Most of this book is devoted to dynamic testing, in which you execute the code and check its functionality. However, testing can begin without running the application by looking at the code to see errors, inefficiencies, and unhandled cases.
The first stage of this testing is to scan the code automatically. Many applications are available to check for uninitialized or unused variables, possible divide-by-zero errors, and the like. These can be built into source code editors but you may need more advanced checks as code complexity increases. Ensure this analysis has run and passed before spending any time on manual testing.
This analysis can catch errors such as memory leaks and null pointers in lower-level languages without memory management. If your company uses languages like that, make sure those checks are part of your software development life cycle.
You can measure many metrics in the code, such as the number of comments, churn in each file, and the...
