WTF is a Regression?

A regression is a specific type of bug that worked at one time, but no longer works as expected.

Regressions are often caused by adjusting or upgrading code in that has an effect on the entire system, making it difficult to test everything before releasing.

These types of bugs are often difficult to avoid in entirety, simply because it is impractical to be able to test 100% of your code, and it is not financially valuable to manually test the pieces that aren't automated.

Using Software to Help

But there is software that can help automate this process! The software available varies widely depending on the languages and frameworks you're working with.

Best Practice

I often recommend that developers spend the time to write programmatic tests for the features of their site (or application) that are most valuable and vulnerable. These are the features and functions that are:

1. Critical to the success of the site.
2. The most unstable or variable.