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This is truly the dumbest thing I've read all year about software development. It isn't just dumb though, it's harmful. Now moron developers everywhere will hol

by danjoc 9y ago

This is truly the dumbest thing I've read all year about software development. It isn't just dumb though, it's harmful. Now moron developers everywhere will hold it up as an excuse why their code is so good it doesn't need testing. Now, especially after Equifax, is a bad time to have this attitude. There are already journalists calling for developer licensure. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/equifax-accountability-security.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/opinion/equifax-accountab...

dkarl 9y ago
This is a critique of popular testing practices by an experienced engineer who is trying to improve the practice of testing and increase software quality. This is a big part of how engineering practices improve. A culture where we call something "dumb" without reading it because we only care what "moron developers" will make of it (presumably also without reading it) isn't going to increase software quality or protect against the next Equifax. It's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to a title and rationalize the desire to respond on that basis. Surely nobody else will read the article, and therefore I have already determined its true significance by having a knee-jerk response to the title or a few haphazardly skimmed sections. If that reasoning prevailed, though, people should just write headlines and never anything more thoughtful, and we should be stuck forever with "UNIT TESTING GOOD" and "UNIT TESTING BAD" as the two competing pinnacles of software testing wisdom. In case anyone was fooled by this comment into thinking the article takes a lazy approach to testing, it argues for keeping a certain class of unit tests; for another class, preferring system tests instead; and for third class, turning them into assertions that ship with production code where possible. That's not lazy. Depending on how you currently test your code, it may actually be a harder standard to meet. It's possible you personally have nothing to learn from it, but I would wager there's something in it that will make you see your tests in a different way.

by danjoc 9y ago

dkarl 9y ago

This is a critique of popular testing practices by an experienced engineer who is trying to improve the practice of testing and increase software quality. This is a big part of how engineering practices improve. A culture where we call something "dumb" without reading it because we only care what "moron developers" will make of it (presumably also without reading it) isn't going to increase software quality or protect against the next Equifax. It's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to a title and rationalize the desire to respond on that basis. Surely nobody else will read the article, and therefore I have already determined its true significance by having a knee-jerk response to the title or a few haphazardly skimmed sections. If that reasoning prevailed, though, people should just write headlines and never anything more thoughtful, and we should be stuck forever with "UNIT TESTING GOOD" and "UNIT TESTING BAD" as the two competing pinnacles of software testing wisdom. In case anyone was fooled by this comment into thinking the article takes a lazy approach to testing, it argues for keeping a certain class of unit tests; for another class, preferring system tests instead; and for third class, turning them into assertions that ship with production code where possible. That's not lazy. Depending on how you currently test your code, it may actually be a harder standard to meet. It's possible you personally have nothing to learn from it, but I would wager there's something in it that will make you see your tests in a different way.