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The practice that most reduces the incidence of tests is code review: https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/the-best-ways-to-find-bugs-in-your-code/ https://kevin.burke

by neves 7y ago

The practice that most reduces the incidence of tests is code review: https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/the-best-ways-to-find-bugs-in-your-code/ https://kevin.burke.dev/kevin/the-best-ways-to-find-bugs-in-...

JamesBarney 7y ago
Emphasis on "Formal code review" which is practiced in far fewer shops than "code review". For those who don't happen to know the difference, formal code review basically uses a check list of common best practices and possible defects to look for versus doing each code review ad-hoc.
- codazoda 7y ago
  I thrive on checklists and hate the ad-hoc way I do code reviews on my team. This sounds great, I'm going to go look for some basic formal checklists. I need language agnostic versions and/or versions for javascript, php, and python, if anyone has suggestions.
  - treebog 7y ago
    The Art of Software Testing by Glenford Myers has an excellent language-agnostic checklist. See the chapter on “walkthroughs”
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      That is a book that, even in the third edition, has a paragraph that disparages random testing. It's difficult for me to see how, in the era of jsfunfuzz, Csmith, AFL, and other such tools, such a source should be taken seriously.
      - munchbunny 7y ago
        A lot of people were right in worthwhile ways and wrong in other ways. For example, Newton. You would be doing yourself a disservice to throw out all of Newton's results because he didn't grasp relativity.
      - treebog 7y ago
        I’ve never found a book on software I agreed 100% with. Even my favorites have some bits I think are dead wrong. It doesn’t mean the other parts aren’t valuable.
        pfdietz 7y ago
        It means the book has not been updated, at least in that part. And the first edition of the book was written back when computing power was seven orders of magnitude more expensive (or more). Is advice about testing from then really going to be valid now?
mcguire 7y ago
I think you mean "bugs", not tests.
- neves 7y ago
  Sure! thanks for the correction.

by neves 7y ago

JamesBarney 7y ago

Emphasis on "Formal code review" which is practiced in far fewer shops than "code review". For those who don't happen to know the difference, formal code review basically uses a check list of common best practices and possible defects to look for versus doing each code review ad-hoc.

codazoda 7y ago
I thrive on checklists and hate the ad-hoc way I do code reviews on my team. This sounds great, I'm going to go look for some basic formal checklists. I need language agnostic versions and/or versions for javascript, php, and python, if anyone has suggestions.
- treebog 7y ago
  The Art of Software Testing by Glenford Myers has an excellent language-agnostic checklist. See the chapter on “walkthroughs”
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    That is a book that, even in the third edition, has a paragraph that disparages random testing. It's difficult for me to see how, in the era of jsfunfuzz, Csmith, AFL, and other such tools, such a source should be taken seriously.
    - munchbunny 7y ago
      A lot of people were right in worthwhile ways and wrong in other ways. For example, Newton. You would be doing yourself a disservice to throw out all of Newton's results because he didn't grasp relativity.
    - treebog 7y ago
      I’ve never found a book on software I agreed 100% with. Even my favorites have some bits I think are dead wrong. It doesn’t mean the other parts aren’t valuable.
      - pfdietz 7y ago
        It means the book has not been updated, at least in that part. And the first edition of the book was written back when computing power was seven orders of magnitude more expensive (or more). Is advice about testing from then really going to be valid now?

mcguire 7y ago

I think you mean "bugs", not tests.

neves 7y ago
Sure! thanks for the correction.