3 ms·

Imagine assembling a car engine without any QC process, perhaps just visual inspection of the parts. The end users (whoever will drive the car) will be the actu

Imagine assembling a car engine without any QC process, perhaps just visual inspection of the parts. The end users (whoever will drive the car) will be the actual testers.

postalrat 6y ago
Testing and documentation are both essential but too much of either becomes harmful.
- qayxc 6y ago
  Welcome to the land of ambiguity and subjectivity - enjoy our stay! The problem is, that there's no way to generally quantify "too much" or "not enough" when it comes to tests and documentation. Even "harmful" isn't a well defined term on its own and needs to be properly defined on a case-by-case basis. The statement is a platitude without any substance behind it and you can replace "testing and documentation" with just about anything and come to the same result: Vitamines and calorie intake are both essential but too much of either becomes harmful. How profound...
- afarrell 6y ago
  https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/ > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools > Working software over comprehensive documentation > Customer collaboration over contract negotiation > Responding to change over following a plan The things on the right are only useful in service of the things on the left.
afarrell 6y ago
You jest, but I have been in a conversation where I proposed a user experience improvement and heard "but if we change the code, it will no longer be tested. Right now, users have reported bugs and we have fixed all of them." Because users always report bugs... If you've ever been frustrated by the package manager Conda and the UX of its command-line interface ...I'm sorry. I tried.
- rooam-dev 6y ago
  It's a trade off. Sure, the ultimate testing is done by customers, but how fast one can push new fixes without tests? 1 reported bug could break many things.
  - afarrell 6y ago
    > but how fast one can push new fixes without tests? Well, if you refuse to write tests and you are scared to make new changes without them... then you can't push new fixes at all. Which is apparently fine for some organizations.

Imagine assembling a car engine without any QC process, perhaps just visual inspection of the parts. The end users (whoever will drive the car) will be the actual testers.

postalrat 6y ago

Testing and documentation are both essential but too much of either becomes harmful.

qayxc 6y ago
Welcome to the land of ambiguity and subjectivity - enjoy our stay! The problem is, that there's no way to generally quantify "too much" or "not enough" when it comes to tests and documentation. Even "harmful" isn't a well defined term on its own and needs to be properly defined on a case-by-case basis. The statement is a platitude without any substance behind it and you can replace "testing and documentation" with just about anything and come to the same result: Vitamines and calorie intake are both essential but too much of either becomes harmful. How profound...
afarrell 6y ago
https://agilemanifesto.org/ https://agilemanifesto.org/ > Individuals and interactions over processes and tools > Working software over comprehensive documentation > Customer collaboration over contract negotiation > Responding to change over following a plan The things on the right are only useful in service of the things on the left.

afarrell 6y ago

You jest, but I have been in a conversation where I proposed a user experience improvement and heard "but if we change the code, it will no longer be tested. Right now, users have reported bugs and we have fixed all of them." Because users always report bugs... If you've ever been frustrated by the package manager Conda and the UX of its command-line interface ...I'm sorry. I tried.

rooam-dev 6y ago
It's a trade off. Sure, the ultimate testing is done by customers, but how fast one can push new fixes without tests? 1 reported bug could break many things.
- afarrell 6y ago
  > but how fast one can push new fixes without tests? Well, if you refuse to write tests and you are scared to make new changes without them... then you can't push new fixes at all. Which is apparently fine for some organizations.