Diffblue, creators of the world’s first AI for code solution that automates writing unit tests for Java, today announced the general availability of Diffblue Cover and Diffblue Cover: Community Edition, a free version created for developers using IntelliJ, the most popular IDE for enterprise Java.
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Diffblue’s pioneering technology, developed by researchers from the University of Oxford, is based on reinforcement learning, the same machine learning strategy that powered AlphaGo, Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind’s software program that beat the world champion player of Go. Diffblue’s customers include Goldman Sachs and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Diffblue Cover automates the burdensome task of writing Java unit tests, a task that takes up as much as 20 percent of Java developers’ time. Diffblue Cover creates Java tests at speeds 10X-100X faster than humans that are also easy for developers to understand, and automatically maintains the tests as the code evolves even on applications with tens of millions of lines of code.
“Software has revolutionized every industry, except software,” said Mathew Lodge, CEO of Diffblue. “Our goal is to be the leader in applying AI to code, starting with unit tests, the critical foundation that allows developers to more frequently ship higher quality software. We help organizations reduce time to ship, ship more often and ship code with fewer defects while freeing up developers to focus more time on the most engaging part of their jobs. Companies on the journey to digital transformation, especially during this COVID pandemic, can’t keep up with the rapid software changes required to reorient their businesses. Automating unit testing on new and legacy code can accelerate their journey to success.”
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A 2019 developer survey found that software engineers, among the most expensive talent in any company, spend 20 percent of their time writing unit tests and an additional 15 percent of their time writing all other types of tests. Yet, those unit tests on average only provided coverage for less than half of the code written. Diffblue Cover removes a key blocker to DevOps adoption in any size organization.
Today, most unit test generators create boilerplate code for tests, rather than tests that compile and run. These tools guess the inputs that can be used as a starting point, but developers have to finish them to get functioning tests. Diffblue Cover is uniquely able to create complete human-readable unit tests that are ready to run immediately.
Diffblue Cover today supports Java, the most popular enterprise programming language in the Global 2000. The technology behind Diffblue Cover can also be extended to support other popular programming languages such as Python, Javascript and C#.
“As enterprises all over the world increasingly emphasize the velocity of their application development processes, unit testing becomes more and more critical. This is particularly true for the millions of enterprise Java developers worldwide, who are charged with maintaining countless critical applications for businesses large and small,” said Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst with RedMonk. “The challenge is that tests can be tedious to write, and developers would prefer to devote their time and attention to writing code if the task of writing tests can be automated. This is the precise opportunity that Diffblue was built for.”
Diffblue Cover comes in two commercial versions. Both the Teams Edition and Enterprise Edition install in less than 5 minutes and provide 100 percent automated Java unit test writing and integrate directly into CI/CD systems.
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