Propane - Addon-MBE

Are you interested in a career working with computers and software? If you are you might consider something like software stress testing. Computer programmers and developers are great at what they do, but sometimes little bugs are formed in the development. Testers can come in to look for these bugs before the launch of a program. Often this is when the beta version is released for testing. Software stress testing is going to test software beyond its normal operations.

For instance, in a video game, a person may play the game trying to beat it 100 percent, but most players are in it more for fun, so hunting for every little detail is not something they will do. They may not even think about looking for ways to jump ahead in the game. With software stress testing, a person would be looking for loopholes. If you save the game in a specific spot, will that game be locked up? Is there a way to punch three or four commands to suddenly skip ahead?

These are just a few ways that software stress testing can be done. The idea of software stress testing is more for operating systems or mission critical programs. Stress tests are meant to look at error handling under a heavy "load", availability and robustness. It takes normal behavior a little farther to see that the software will work in the normal situation.

Most individuals using software are not going to test its limitations, but work within the parameters. So in software stress testing if a program can hold up to more than it is ready to be let out into the world. Field experience is required for the testing. By field testing more than one person can look for issues. Google is a good example of this.

Google has recently launched the Wave program, which is in the software stress testing phase to work out any problems. It is only available to a few people. These people are looking to see how well the program works and what will make it crash. The normal person will also have lower system components than large companies doing software stress testing, which makes a difference.