Defensive Programming

Submitter: William McGrath
Submitter's Institution: TACC
Submission Date: 2014-11-03
Description: TACC

Prerequisites: Linux, C/Fortran

Modern scientific programming is fraught with potential peril. Even simple programs routinely perform trillions of operations, making it impossible to check the calculations by hand. This talk provides tips, techniques, and tools for scientists and engineers to help them survive. Topics to be discussed are: effective tools for creating software; unit and system testing; designing with testing in mind; DRY: do not repeat yourself; language specific defenses; and out of bounds errors. Having introduced system testing in the first talk in this series, this talk will explain how system testing is used in developing scientific software. Dr. McLay will show how testing is important, reduces development time, and extends the use and lifetime of a project. Actual experiences with system testing will be presented. During hands-on lab sessions, "TM", a software testing tool will be introduced, and Dr. McLay will work with attendees to apply it to their projects. Either Part 1 or Part 2 can be taken independent of the other.

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