Tests (was Re: The Butterfly Manifesto (was Re: [RT] Spring+JMX == Real Blocks?))

[Ugo Cei <ug...@apache.org>]

Il giorno 22/lug/04, alle 01:18, Stefano Mazzocchi ha scritto:

> Ugo Cei wrote:
>> Agreed, but even if we cannot prove that code is correct with unit 
>> tests alone, we can at least hope that - statistically - code that 
>> has 100% test coverage will have less bugs than code that has 10% 
>> test coverage. Unfortunately, my impression is that Cocoon is now at 
>> the lower end of the spectrum.
>
> Ugo,
>
> tests help but don't really buy us anything: have a community that is 
> strong and diverse enough to do the regression testing for us.

Ouch! I can't believe I'm reading this. I'm not going to try to 
convince you that shifting the burden of testing from the shoulders of 
lazy programmers onto those of unsuspecting users is a bad thing. I 
want to be positive instead and tell you what tests do buy us:

- less recourse to debuggers
- better documentation
- enabling refactoring
- better design
- faster development

In the end it's a matter of confidence. You're developing better code 
faster when you have the cconfiidence that, if you break something, 
tests will tell you very quickly.

> Let's not mix concerns: cocoon has few tests, agreed, but this has 
> nothing to do with the architecture.

I never meant that to imply that Cocoon's architecture is not good 
because it has few tests. But I believe that having a wide test 
coverage leads to designing components that are more amenable to 
testing in isolation and thus less coupled. And I think we all agree 
that loose coupling is a worthwhile objective.

	Ugo

-- 
Ugo Cei - http://beblogging.com/