3 ms·

> Do you really need tests for the read(2) syscall when Linux is running on a billion devices, and that syscall is called some 10^12 times per second globally?

• mberning 4y ago
  I think the OP took the strictest and dumbest definition of testing possible, used that as his straw man, and then lit it on fire. The fact that systems level programmers, generally speaking, have a disregard for testing automation is apparent. Over the years if somebody had the "pleasure" of running any type of linux distro, how many times would things break randomly for reasons that the end user could only imagine? Many of those issues probably could have been surfaced and fixed before the code shipped had there been any testing automation in place. But let's forget linux for a minute. Look at Windows. For the longest time the quality of windows was the biggest joke in software. And those engineers working on it, sorry to say, were cut from the same cloth as the Linux kernel folks and all other systems programmers. We don't need no stinking tests. Well eventually somebody that cared about the reputation of the company forced testing upon these teams and lo and behold things have gotten way better. Apple is the same way. To me it is honestly astounding that there is still such a strong anti-testing sentiment in the industry. When you have more than a handful of people working on a complex system I greatly prefer to know that there is a robust test suite looking at important functionality, seeing if performance degrades, checking for static analysis errors, etc. And when something does break, since I already have a testing solution in place, it is generally easy to add a test which covers the regression and ensures that it never comes back.