Checking v/s Testing
Testing is explorative, probing and learning oriented.
Checking is confirmative (verification and validation of what we already know). The outcome of a check is simply a pass or fail result; the outcome doesn’t require human interpretation. Hence checking should be the first target for automation.
James Bach points out that checking does require some element of testing; to create a check requires an act of test design, and to act upon the result of a check requires test result interpretation and learning. But its important to distinguish between the two because when people refer to Testing they really mean Checking.
Why is this distinction important?
Michael Bolton explains it really well. He says:
A development strategy that emphasizes checking at the expense of testing is one in which we’ll emphasize confirmation of existing knowledge over discovery of new knowledge. That might be okay. A few checks might constitute sufficient testing for some purpose; no testing and no checking at all might even be sufficient for some purposes. But the more we emphasize checking over testing, and the less testing we do generally, the more we leave ourselves vulnerable to the Black Swan.
