Mutation testing is a controversial topic.  Among researchers, some find it to have great value, while others[*] are rather skeptical of its value.  Among practitioners, most have not heard about mutation testing, but a few do use it, to name just two examples: the Apache Lucene open-source project has a Maven task to run the PIT mutation tool, and the RSpec testing tool for Ruby has a "heckle" mode.

In this talk, the speaker (hopefully together with a lively audience) will speculate about some reasons why mutation testing is controversial and what we can do about it.  Is mutation testing too slow?  Do we lack practical tools?  Is it used only to evaluate test suites or also to generate test suites?  Is it useful only in research or also in practice?  The speaker will also present some recent research from his group and collaborators on speeding up mutation testing and using it to compare test suites.

[*] If this abstract were a Wikipedia page, it may say here "[citation needed]", but let's keep the people anonymous.