The Foundations of Software Engineering Test of Time Award recognizes highly influential papers published ten years ago in ESEC or FSE. Our paper Differential symbolic execution, co-authored with Suzette Person, Matthew Dwyer, and Corina Pasareanu in FSE 2008, earned the FSE Test of Time Award in 2018.
This paper introduced a novel form and application of symbolic execution that computes a precise behavioral characterization of a program change. This technique, which we called differential symbolic execution (DSE), exploits the fact that program versions are largely similar to reduce cost and improve the quality of analysis results.
