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>Modern programming practice emphasizes tests, which is great. However, not all kinds of tests can be written so far. I don't think this is true in practice. I
by crdoconnor 11y ago
>Modern programming practice emphasizes tests, which is great. However, not all kinds of tests can be written so far.
I don't think this is true in practice. It's just that a lot of scenarios people need tests for aren't easy to replicate and most people end up not bothering and relying upon manual checking instead.
- akkartik 11y agoAre you aware of any projects where this is not true? Perhaps Sqlite3 (http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html http://www.sqlite.org/testing.html). But in my personal experience it's not "most people" but "all people". I'd love to hear contradicting data or anecdotes.
- crdoconnor 11y agoI've worked on projects before which initially had no tests, then some tests, then progressively more and more sophisticated tests. Each time the harness became capable enough to replicate a certain type of scenario it didn't take long before those kinds of bugs dried up. The bugs then always nearly always migrated to the areas the test harness couldn't easily create scenarios for - whether that was interactions with crazy external APIs, odd timezones or weird quirky browsers or whatever. Continually modifying the test harness to be made capable of testing bugs reported from production was often a huge amount of work but it paid off handsomely.