An application that often fails when it encounters new but valid inputs is called buggy; a test that spuriously fails when a sound change was made to the program is called brittle. Just as a buggy program frustrates its users, a brittle test exasperates its maintainers. The most brittle tests, which fail for almost any change to the production code, good or bad, are sometimes called change detector or status quo tests, and the time spent dealing with them can quickly deplete any benefit they once seemed to provide.
