Quality by the Numbers
2011-11WilsonF2.jpgClick to Enlarge ImageA good example of the harvest that empirical studies are generating relates to one of the holy grails of software engineering: the ability to measure the quality of a program, not by running it and looking for errors, but by automated examination of the source code itself. Any technique that could read a program and predict how reliable it would be before it is delivered to customers would save vast sums of money, and probably lives as well.