ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

White-box testing

White-box testing is like peeking inside a toy to see how it works. When you open up a toy, you can see all the little parts that make it work, and you can test them to make sure they work properly. Similarly, in programming, white-box testing is when you look inside the code of a computer program to see how it works and test each part to make sure it's working correctly.

When a programmer writes a computer program, they create a set of instructions that the computer follows to do a particular task. These instructions are written in a language that the computer can understand, but humans might find it hard to understand just by looking at it. So, in white-box testing, a tester (someone who is checking the program) goes through the code of the program to see if everything is working as expected. They check if the code is following the instructions, and if the program is doing what it's supposed to do.

White-box testing is very helpful because there are a lot of things that can go wrong when writing a computer program. For example, a programmer might accidentally use the wrong variable, which causes the program to crash. Or they might write a function that doesn't do what it's supposed to do. By doing white-box testing, the tester can find these problems and report them to the programmer so that they can fix them.

Overall, white-box testing helps make sure that computer programs work correctly by looking at the code and testing each part individually to make sure it does what it's supposed to do.
Related topics others have asked about: