Smoke test

The term smoke test is used in electronics to refer to the first time a circuit under development is attached to power. This may be done before all the work is complete, just to ensure that there are no major flaws that would make further work moot. Circuits that fail at this stage sometimes literally produce smoke, often from burning resistors, which produce a unique smell familiar to many technicians.

The term is also used metaphorically, especially in computer programming, where it is also called a "sanity test".