Make the computers work
Lawrie’s talk at BugBash started with The Price is Right and ended with a compelling case for autonomous testing. She distilled her experience as Senior Consultant and bug hunter extraordinaire into a playful Plinko metaphor, which became one of the most memorable talks at BugBash.
Her thesis? Traditional testing is essentially rote memorization that works – until it doesn’t. Because software systems, just like Plinko, are hard to predict and do not reward optimism. Discs fall, discs get stuck and sometimes everything explodes.
Instead of trying to guess where the bugs are, autonomous testing embraces unpredictability and attempts to tame it with randomness. You define a few parameters and let the computer take over. Let it explore. Let it break things. Let it prove you wrong – because it will.
The masterclass showcased the power of this approach through a practical lens. Testing isn’t about finding the usual bugs, it’s about finding the bugs you didn’t see coming. Antithesis not only finds such bugs with ease, it empowers you throughout the process with effective assertions, smart triage reports and multiverse debugging.
Look, we’re posting 10 amazing technical talks from BugBash, we’ve earned one shameless plug. More cool stuff is coming. Stay tuned.
