Software that Makes Software Better

Modern civilization depends on software, so it needs to be as reliable as possible. But software is produced by humans, who are fallible. The programs they create are prone to crashes, bugs and security holes. What can be done?

A good way to make more reliable software may, oddly enough, be to use even more software. Programmers are increasingly calling upon bug-squashing tools for help at various stages in the software-development process. Some of these tools help programmers to work together more effectively. Other tools scrutinise the resulting software, or its underlying source code, for problems. And still others help project managers put numbers on code quality, programmer productivity, and the cost-effectiveness of fixing particular bugs, so they can decide which bugs ought to be fixed first.

Things are improving, insists Daniel Sabbah, who started programming over 30 years ago and is now general manager of IBM's Rational Software unit, which makes software-development tools.

Tescom is a key partner of IBM Rational in the US and globally, specializing in software test automation, automated testing tool implementations and conversion of manual tests to automated scripts.