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News Release 04-065
Researchers to Help Exterminate Bugs in Spreadsheets, Web Applications
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The Whyline's answer to a question during programming of a Pac-Man-like game. The programmer expected Pac to shrink when Pac touched the ghost, but the resizing didn't seem to happen. The programmer asked, "Why didn't Pac resize 0?" The Whyline revealed that the resize did in fact happen, but had no effect on the screen. This helped the programmer isolate the problem to the resize statement and ignore parts of the code that were correct.
Credit: Andrew J. Ko, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
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The 'What You See is What You Test' (WYSIWYT) testing approach. Spreadsheet cell borders reflect the 'testedness' of cells. Users indicate 'testing decisions' by placing checkmarks.
Credit: Eugene Creswick, Joe Ruthruff, Margaret Burnett and Gregg Rothermel, Oregon State University
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Fault localization support in the "What You See is What You Test" approach. Spreadsheet cell interiors indicate cells that might contain errors, with darker colors corresponding to increased likelihood. This feedback is triggered when the user notices bad values.
Credit: Eugene Creswick, Joe Ruthruff, Margaret Burnett and Gregg Rothermel, Oregon State University
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